RIPSTOP

Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, Houston, TX. September 30, 2023 - January 6, 2024

Max Adrian crafts speculative worlds from textiles and air. Invoking the visionary histories of queer fiber art and inflatable architecture, his monumental sculptures reimagine existing social and material infrastructures using the frameworks of play and desire. The exhibition's title, RIPSTOP, is both a nod to the synthetic material of the same name and a double command evocative of the stage directions "action!" and "cut!” The exhibition invites viewers to examine the artifice, performance, and stagecraft central to the ongoing construction of both queer identity and the architecture of utopia. This solo exhibition surveys the past decade of Adrian's career, uniting his experiments in both tactile and digital media, which trace identity formation and queer worldbuilding as projects that are perpetually oriented to the future. From their repetitive performances of inflating and deflating to the additive strategies that allow his pieces to expand and change over time, Adrian’s multilayered work is in a constant state of becoming. Forming the stage upon which the artist seeks to perform, self-actualize, and enact potential, RIPSTOP ultimately suggests that the world Adrian desires, like queer utopia itself, is not here quite yet. It is on the horizon.

Artist: Max Adrian

Role: Curator

Photography by Emily Peacock; Katy Anderson