_Bio Born in Tel-Aviv (1985) and raised in Vancouver, Basanta has lived and worked in Montreal since 2010. An autodidact across various media and techniques, he has received awards for his work in Canada (Prix Pierre Ayot 2019, Sobey Art Award Longlist 2018 and 2020) and abroad (Japan Media Arts Prize 2016, Aesthetica Art Prize 2017).
Since 2015, his works have been exhibited worldwide in venues such as the Musée des beaux- arts de Montréal, WRO Biennale (POL), Fotomuseum Winterthur (CH), Cite International des Arts - Paris (FRA), Arsenal Art Contemporain (CAN), Galerie Charlot (FRA), iMAL (BEL), National Art Centre Tokyo (JPN), V Moscow Biennale for Young Art (RUS), Serralves Museum (POR), Edith-Russ-Haus fur Mediakunst (GER), York Art Gallery (UK), and The Center for Contemporary Arts Santa Fe (USA).
_Approach Adam Basanta’s work investigates technology - a continuous spectrum spanning from mud-brick to machine learning - as a meeting point of concurrent, overlapping systems; a nexus of cultural, computational, biological, and economic forces. In uncovering and augmenting systems of entanglement, he positions the viewer as an outside observer.
His research and creation processes balance qualitative and quantitative approaches. He is particularly interested in the interplay between the two seemingly polar opposite, binary viewpoints, and strive towards a cross-pollination in which one feeds and complicates the other, and vice versa. Basanta views art-making as a form of continual search and discovery. This guiding principle - of continual change, risk-taking, and acquiring of new skills - underpins the diversity of practice, methodologies, and output media. Each work is an imperfect record of a particular moment, with overarching meanings found in the discontinuities between various works.
_Project Adam Basanta will create an in-situ architectural response to the historical building designs found locally. Basanta’s project will re-create an architectural design entirely through the use of compacted post-consumer waste and compacted natural materials.
This architecture will consists of custom-made “building blocks”, each composed of a single post-consumer recycled material* (i.e. PET plastic, aluminum cans), waste product (construction waste, e-waste), or natural material (straw, etc). Sourced locally, the materials will be cleaned and compressed into a mould using a compacting system developed by the artist. The alternating materials allows each block to contrast with its neighbours, challenging the visual continuity of the structure, while allowing reflection on our reliance, over-production, and genuine affection of consumer goods. Following fabrication in the workshop, the sculpture will be assembled outdoors, entering into dialog with its natural surroundings.
Photo credits : Marco Giugliarelli