Florida based artist Adam Lavigne’s debut solo exhibition centers on a seemingly banal food item, the hamburger. These paintings and sculptures of burgers, augmented to permit the proper degree of scrutiny (a few adorned with googly eyes), compel us to recognize that a burger is never just a burger: Objects of everyday life, such as the fast-food sandwich, always exceed their status as given or meaningless. Lavigne’s inventive technique for his paintings, assembling his own custom panels and wrapping the canvas by hand, affords no blank space to distract from the subject: The canvas itself takes on the precise shape of a burger. The paintings do not “depict” an image within a larger canvas; the painting itself “is” a burger.
Adam Lavigne (American, b. 1988) is a visual artist living with his wife and daughter in Orlando, Florida. His work, playful and varied, has been featured in publications such as Orlando Weekly, Orlando Sentinel, and SR-50. From 2015 until 2020, Lavigne and his now-wife, Anna Cruz held an annual dual art show. These shows, exhibited at different Orlando galleries, synthesized their distinct iconographies around a common theme, such as their 2019 show, “Heaven is a Place on Earth.” “Hamburgers Today” is his first solo exhibition.
