River Valley Arts Collective is pleased to present Adam Henry’s exhibition Path Anti-Path, a group of paintings defined by Henry’s interest in material, specifically, the woven structures of his painting’s support. In each work, small dots of paint intersect the warp and weft of his jute canvases, following geometric patterns that are delineated by the fabric’s grid. Henry’s Path Paintings date from 2009 to 2019.

Henry’s work is often informed by the systems of visual and oral languages, visible in the use of recurring geometries, optical color play, and impossible circular references. Path Anti-Path highlights Henry’s attention to craft, handwork, and material significance, combining the systematic logic of the Jacquard loom card patterns with the legacies of 20th century geometric abstraction.

Henry was born in Pueblo, CO and grew up near Taos and Sante Fe, both ethnically and culturally diverse communities in the West. The influence of weaving traditions among the Navajo and Pueblo peoples has become integrated into the common culture in the American Southwest, a visual influence loaded with complex patterning that Henry recounts as his first experience of art. The posteriori experience of such work surfaces in Henry’s recent interest in the woven structures of his paintings, layered with an accomplished visual language formed by theory-based education that many students of art and art history of Henry’s generation received. Consequently, despite its straightforward process, works in Path Anti-Path are accessible through a multitude of vantages.