Adam Fuss

(London, England, 1961 - )

Logos

2015

Silver gelatin photogram

40 1/4 x 20 3/4 in. (102.4 x 52.8 cm)

Collection of the Akron Art Museum

Gift of Emily and Teddy Greenspan

2025.17

Copyright of Adam Fuss and Fraenkel Gallery

More Information

Adam Fuss debuted this unique gelatin silver photogram as part of his 2015 exhibition at Cheim & Read Gallery in New York, titled λόγος. While the title can be translated as Logos, its pointed presentation in Greek characters emphasizes the word’s connection to ancient philosophy. Originally a word signifying “word,” “discourse,” or “reason,” its meaning expanded in philosophical contexts to further suggest a uniting rationality that encompasses and animates cosmology, nature, humans, and the divine. Stoic philosophy in particular held that this spiritual principle was evident in all activity and possessed, in part, by every person. In Fuss’s usage, the more straightforward meaning of λόγος as “word” might connect to the etymological origin of the term “photography” in the Greek words for “light” and “writing” (or “drawing”). Ultimately, the suggestion seems to be that photography is an effective means to record and make visible the otherwise ineffable qualities of λόγος—to “write” the “word” of the universe. As such, the exhibition’s title serves as an impressively concise (if not quite manifestly clear) summation of the central concerns of the artist’s career. In the central room of the exhibition, six photograms were likewise each titled Logos (translated in this instance). These vertical images were each over 100 inches tall, while the subject of this report bears the same title and is a realization of the same concept in a smaller format. While Fuss’s previous works with moving water were created with the photographic paper in a horizonal position, these were executed in an upright orientation, resulting in an appearance closer to waterfalls, thanks in part to a 100-gallon bucket. The press release for the exhibition described these works this way: In Fuss’s photograms of water, verticality and its implied movement are integral to his intentions. The image-making process is less predictable, and the work is focused instead on the event and its result—which, as he says, is “a photographic representation of energy”—rather than on its materiality. Monumental in scale at just over 9 feet tall, the images engulf the viewer, and in this way are reminiscent of Abstract Expressionist canvases, particularly the gestural drips of Jackson Pollock or the cool verticality of Barnett Newman’s “zip” paintings. History, however, does not weigh Fuss’s work. As with much of his imagery, the seeming simplicity of his sources (water falling, snakes slithering) is belied by the depth and variety of possible readings, allowing for complex associations and interpretations. The expressiveness conveyed in these works is also contrasted by the impressive technical feats by which they are made. These observations hold even with the small size of the work under discussion here, with chance, action, energy, presence, and association as central aspects of the photogram. In keeping with the exhibition’s title, the image seems to arrest and make visible the movement of water as something that is both mundanely common and unrepeatably specific—a fitting manifestation of λόγος.