Media Reviews and Appearances

 

ARTIST PROJECTS
Romanian-born, Texas-based artist Adela Andea, presented by Anya Tish Gallery, creates complex light sculptures and installations that explore the fine line between reality and virtual reality. Swarms of LED and CCL lights along with pulsing electrical components are intricately weaved together, forming technological landscapes that hypnotize and engulf the viewer, reflecting sociopolitical themes of over-globalization.

Adela Andea received first place, which was no surprise to me. I have seen Andea's work at Cris Worley Fine Art, here in Dallas and at the Anya Tish Gallery in Houston. Each experience was like seeing a light show, with seemingly random elements thrown at you visually. Sometimes electric fans were added to give the piece a little more movement. Andea is sometimes a kinetic, always tech, and a truly 21st century artist.

When I first viewed photographs of Adela Andea's work, I was sceptical that her art was just bells and whistles. But then I saw the work at Cris Worley gallery and I was taken back by the movement. The lights are places like brush strokes of an expressionist artists. There is a nice organized randomness to the work that has many contradictions. You can follow the wires and watch to slow pulsating fans all day.

When I first viewed photographs of Adela Andea's work, I was sceptical that her art was just bells and whistles. But then I saw the work at Cris Worley gallery and I was taken back by the movement. The lights are places like brush strokes of an expressionist artists. There is a nice organized randomness to the work that has many contradictions. You can follow the wires and watch to slow pulsating fans all day.

In 2009, Adela Andea lit up the Houston art scene with her fluorescent-light-filled installation at Lawndale Art Center, The Green™ CyberWeb. Her new show at Anya Tish Gallery promises to be equally radiant. Pool noodles, cable sleeves, aquarium tubing and fluorescent lighting are some of Andea's favorite things and in Bioluminescence she's transforming her wholly manmade materials into sculptures that feel organic – in an eerie and alien way. A sneak peek before the show's opening reveals the only drawback is that the gallery has nixed any sprawling installations in favor of more contained and salable works. A glowing accumulation in the back alcove, tiled with pool noodle slices that read like cells, is constrained into a rectilinear wall piece. It's pretty great anyway but seeing it grow over the walls would be even better. Andea is one of Houston's most interesting emerging artists and the show is a must see. And if you're pining for another over-the-top installation, word is she's got an upcoming – and unfettered – solo show at the Art League.

As these visuals confirm, Adela's skill creating light-filled three-dimensional sculptures of neon strips that submerge the attention-spanning surrounding spaces into truly beautiful hypnotic sensory experiences. With light alone she transcends the viewer into a computer-created uplifting and totally unreal sphere. The hardware sections, "a medium to themselves" to support and hold the strips together are an integral element in the complicated digitally conceived constructions while the glow in the physical space surrounding the whole wall and the viewer increases the electrifying presence of the art piece.

The year begins with an emphasis on light, brought forth literally and figuratively by four Texas artists. First up, at Anya Tish Gallery, Adela Andea dazzles with light displays that take the legacy of Flavin's eloquent minimalism and propel it into today. Andea's free-form, exuberant sculptures with jutting bolts of lights and organic explosion of electrical parts and whirring fans make you want to celebrate. Her exhibition "Bioluminescence" also concocts a wild installation that recalls a cyber, underwater fairy tale.

In a past review for the Press I described Romanian artist Adela Andea's Lawndale Art Center installation, filled with glowing rods of cold cathode fluorescent light, as "reminiscent of an Eastern European disco -- in a good way." There's more over-the-top light-fueled work in her upcoming show at Anya Tish Gallery - this time she's creating "futuristic eco-systems."

Texas art might be bluebonnets. But it's also green, red and blue neon lights joyfully splayed in directions hither and thither as they form a spider-web network of sorts, while computer fans, caught in the glowing web, whir and buzz, whir and buzz, whir and buzz...Some of the eye-wowing works are installations, such as the web of computer fans and neon stick lights, actually cold cathode lights. It glows in one dark corner of the museum and is by Conroe, Texas, artist Adela Andea.

This corporate-dominated office was ready to be reclaimed by two artists, Lana Chu and Adela Andea where they stripped the traditional office space and anchored the space with new interpretations of office materials. Installations include layers of sculptural computer components, eye catching multicolored LED lights, whimsical plastic water bottles where no discarded office supplies are left behind!

"Adela Andea: The Green™ cyber web" Adela Andea's work in Lawndale's Project Space is one of the best installations the space has seen. The Romanian-born artist has created an environment that feels both techno and surreal, with a dash of Kafka. It's reminiscent of an Eastern European disco — in a good way. Andea crafted giant spiders and shell- or cocoon-like shapes in white hydrocal, lit from within by a harsh reddish-orange light. The jointed, motorized spider legs move slowly and ominously. Short, slender, glowing rods of cold cathode fluorescent light in green and blue hang all over the room, with wires forming a tangled kind of web. The lights alter the colors in the room, turning it from, say, orange into the color of past-the-date beef. Small, square LED case fans (used to cool computers) are suspended in the space, spinning and humming, shaking slightly with their effort. It's an incredibly strange and highly original environment, and the seemingly disparate elements work together to create something otherworldly.