Exhibition Runs: August 15 – September 15, 2022
Reception & Artist Talks: Saturday August 27, 4:30pm – 6:30pm
Artist Talks
We invite you to join us for an exhibition reception and artist talks at Harwood Art Center by Adrian Pijoan and Diego Medina on Saturday, August 27, 2022 with artist talks starting at 5:00pm. This event is free and open to all ages. For more informatin visit www.harwoodartcenter.org. Masks are optional and encouraged indoors.
Public Gallery Hours
This exhibition is open to view by the public on Wednesdays and Thursdays from 10am-3pm. Masks are optional and encouraged indoors.
Press
Albuquerque Courier: Thoughts on Eyeshine by Adrian Pijoan >
Albuquerque Journal: ‘Eyeshine’ showing at Harwood with ‘Holy Land’ through Sept 15 >
Eyeshine
A strange light flashes across the night sky. Eerie sounds emanate from a thick patch of woods deep in the mountains. Something slithers beneath the moonlight. You wake from a dream and wonder if it could have been real. You wonder what “real” even means anymore.
Eyeshine explores an encounter with the paranormal through an installation of video, animation, and sculpture. Adrian uses his long-running paranormal researcher alter-ego, Dr. Howard, to explore his anxieties that arise from the tension between the horrific real, and the sublime unreal.
Eyeshine is a loving and sometimes bittersweet homage to these stories and the sustenance they provide during difficult times – a vision into both outer space and inner worlds.
About Adrian
Adrian Pijoan is a new media artist based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Sightings of Adrian have been reported at UFO festivals, Bigfoot research conferences, and in the dark recesses of the comments sections of low-view-count YouTube videos. Adrian explores the relationship between contemporary storytelling, landscape, the paranormal, and the internet.
Adrian received his MFA in art and ecology from the University of New Mexico in 2016 and his BA in botany from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 2011. Adrian’s work has been shown at De:Formal; Silicon Valet; Daniela Elbahara in Mexico City, Mexico; The Sanitary Tortilla Factory in Albuquerque, New Mexico; The University of New Mexico Art Museum; at gallery weekend in Lima, Peru; Bikini Wax Gallery in Mexico City, Mexico; as part of the International Symposium of Electronic Arts in Vancouver, Canada; and in other traditional and nontraditional spaces.
Artist Statement
Do aliens traverse the night sky? Does Bigfoot haunt our sylvan forests? Does it matter?
That’s the thing about folklore—the truth is not inevitable. What matters is how these stories reflect our shared hopes, dreams, fears, and traumas. I am drawn to the paranormal because I find my own ecstasies and anxieties in tales of UFOs, cryptids, and the other fantastical horrors that have plagued and delighted humans for centuries. The dark skies of New Mexico provide the perfect tapestry in which to find “them,” and by extension, myself.
These are the voyages of the Starship Adrian. My eternal mission: to seek out new lifeforms, and touch them gently in the night.
