Clara Adolphs

Clara Adolphs uses anonymous and discarded photographs of markets, deceased heirlooms and online shops as the subject of her paintings. The snapshots show a cosy familiarity: moments of leisure in nature, small social gatherings or scenes of solitude. Recording a lost moment, the found photographs are recreated as paintings. The moments now last forever; the memory continues with infinite possibilities.

Adolphs is attracted to photographs that show a particular light and atmosphere. Intense shadows are representative of dusk and the end of the day; Adolphs finds that they intensify the atmosphere and infuse his subjects with a gentle melancholy. They reflect a particular era of analogue photography: the 1940s to 1960s, when cameras represented light differently and could not store detailed information. Adolphs searches for these indeterminate spaces in the grain of the photographs, intrigued by the lack of visual clarity, which, like memories, can be filled in. In the studio, Adolphs uses muted tones and colours, visible strokes, wet and dry brushstrokes, but above all palette knives, which make quick gestural marks to underline the fleetingness of memories.

Some of his works feature a “couple”, but he still intends them to be seen as a group that shows his world. A disparate world, inspired by unconnected people and places. Clara Adolphs brings them together through her unreal landscape.

As in the nature of photography, repeating and reproducing, from her studio she remakes an original image. In this way he tries to recreate the essence that captured the shot at a particular moment and time.