Adam Rada↓

About the work

Plein Air with Broadened Horizons

Adam Rada’s painting series is based on his travels around the virtual globe and its individual works are processed by Google algorithms. The Google Earth application uses multiple satellite shots capturing locations from different angles, subsequently composing them into a 3D model and finally covering them with an uploaded texture. The given process results in a heavy deformation. But Rada does not view these deviations from the photorealistic images as errors, as it would seem at the first sight. On the contrary, the aesthetic qualities accompanying this kind of computer stylization are emphasized. Because its logic does not vary from the artistic stylizations employed throughout the history of art.

The paintings by Rada capture scenes from many European and American cities. They display the effect of a certain selective globalization. On the one hand, the program erases distances and differences between cities, such as climate, culture, and language barriers. On the other hand, however, it maps only some, thus dividing them into urban centers and other cities, or Europe and America against the rest of the world.