Created by David Adamo for his first solo exhibition in the United States, organized by the Albright-Knox in 2015, Untitled (AK 1) is part of a larger group of the artist's formally elegant hard-carved cedar sculptures. On one level, these freely reference the modernist sculptural canon, sometimes subtly echoing abstractions by Jean (Hans) Arp or the wood bases that Constantin Brancusi crafted for his sculptures. They also reveal the artist’s fascination with the accidental and even surreal shapes he observes in nature, such as trees gnawed by beavers, stumps hollowed by woodpeckers, and earth mounded by termites. Works such as Untitled (AK 1) “point to the incredibly diverse ways [materials] can be manipulated and transformed to create a story,” Adamo has said.

 Label from David Adamo, January 22–May 17, 2015