ADELA ANDEA at Art League Houston through February 22nd by Todd Camplin

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ADELA ANDEA
at Art League Houston through February 22nd
by Todd Camplin

A garden of lights and colorful shapes has grown up at the Art League Houston
space. In H. G. Wells'book "War of the Worlds," the alien invaders try to
reverse-terraforming the earth to make it more hospital for their life.

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previous articles
by Todd Camplin

Romanian born, with a Texas size personality, Adela Andea is no alien from another planet,
but she has propagated an imaginative outdoor installation that could easily come from
another world. Best seen at night, the cold cathode fluorescent light and flex neon give
glow to the plastic objects.

The show is masterfully titled, “Primordial Garden.” Adela Andea’s installation looks as if
she has cultivated mistletoe and lichen like objects and then electrified them with lights.
Andea’s art objects act as an invasive species from the star system, Andea. You can imagine
these works feeding off the local flora, but in reality their food is just from the electric grid.
Back in January, she used the University of North Texas; Cora Stafford Gallery as a nursery
of ideas for this current show. The installation was up for only four days, but made for a
memorable MFA exhibition. The lights flowed across the ceilings, floors, and walls. The
alien plant like material stretched on one wall. Although this material was bright with
colors, the flex neon seems to push this part of the installation into the dark.

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Besides the Art League Houston space, which ends February 7th, Adela Andea will feature
a work at the Houston Art Fair this weekend, and at Lone Star College for their faculty show
in the Kingwood Art Gallery which ends September 20th.

Primordial Garden - Art League Houston, Outdoor Sculpture Garden

In past shows, Andea has pieces that stretched out with a balance of distributed lights,
computer parts, and wires. Some art works would have a few large lights as thin focal
points. But this show seems to return to some of her old form she created before grad
school. I was lucky enough to see a slide show and lecture on her current and past
work. She was making mutated shaped art objects influenced by the Chernobyl
disaster. These new masses of plastic make me see continuity with r her older shapes,
only these new objects are more optimistic, energetic, and lively. Instead of mutation,
Andea has moved to giving us an “other worldly” feeling. Although, you can read into
the work a dark future in which these fabricated art works or something genetically
created in the future might replace our current natural world.

Primordial Garden - Art League Houston, Outdoor Sculpture Garden