Masterwork Series: Adam Lupton's Telos (The Drowning)

Telos (The Drowning) was the first installment of Sugarlift's Masterwork Series. The idea behind the series was simple: we spend 28.63 seconds on average looking at a work of art, so each installment would break through that attention deficit by presenting one painting by one artist for a month, and getting up close with the artist behind it. For its debut, Sugarlift's studio in Long Island City showed a single large painting by Adam Lupton, with a low black pool of water on the floor in front of it.

The painting was a turn in Lupton's long exploration of human ritual. In his words: "A baptism, a drowning: When context is stripped, the vulgarity and violence of the ritual is exposed. Layers of dirt, sand, wax and paint energize the struggle between persons and submersion." Born in Vancouver in 1987 and based in Brooklyn at the time, Lupton hollows out culturally potent symbols and myths to explore individual and societal anxiety and isolation, with Plato's allegory of the cave in mind.

The series opened on Saturday, February 23, 2019. After an hour of open gallery, Sugarlift founder Wright Harvey introduced Lupton, who decoded the painting himself in a presentation and moderated Q&A. Telos then stayed on view on Saturday afternoons through March 16.