Adam de Boer elevates his sun-soaked paintings with thick white outlines

One glance at Adam de Boer’s intriguingly outlined paintings is all you need to see the influence of his LA hometown: towering palm trees, vast open highways, skateboarders and a hazy, sun-washed hue throughout. Though in terms of technique, parts of Adam’s work comes from much further afield. His multimedia incorporation of Indonesian Javanes Batik textile – a wax-resist cloth dying process that creates his thick white outlines – into his work is a way of connecting his artistic practice “with those of his distant cultural forbearers”.

By “drawing equally” on western painting logic and Indonesian craft, Adam aims to question the preconceived notions of culture and how they often exist amongst “systems of implicitly agreed upon conceptual constructs”. By using the window gazing and projections as metaphors, he delves into weighty questions, such as: “How do our origin narratives and contexts influence how and who is considered to be ‘allowed’ or ‘belong’ to a place, culture, or ideology?”. From 16-21 January, Adam’s second solo exhibition The Sunset Cycle will be held at Taymour Granhe projects in London’s Notting Hill.