Adam Colton
Shrubberies

Three mysterious forms lie in the grass in a seemingly random way. They look like they have been washed ashore by the sea looming just behind the dunes. The forms are difficult to define and evoke associations with human bodies, primitive animal species or sand drifts. The English sculptor Adam Colton designed them for the De Jutter Centre for Juvenile Psychiatry in The Hague.

Colton placed the highly polished aluminium sculptures in front of De Jutter’s new building. The forms recur inside on the wall of the restaurant, reduced in size but in the same grouping. The sculpture is titled The Shrubberies.

Adam Colton is interested in rhythm, size, surface structure, the effect of light and the ‘skin’ of his sculptures. The skin forms the boundary of the two elements from which the sculptures are constructed: material and space. In The Shrubberies, too, Colton seeks out the tension between the sculpture’s interior and its surface. The way the light falls across the smooth surface makes the sculpture look different every time. Adam Colton usually starts out from existing forms such his own body, a skull, the seat of a chair, a pumpkin, bone or stone, but these forms are unrecognisable in the final result. He deliberately does not define the form of his sculptures, so that the viewer is invited to make his or her own associations.