Works Text Exhibitions Chronology

Adam Lupton

Mirror Mirror II
2026
Oil on canvas
80 × 60 cm

Atlas
2025
Oil on canvas
220 × 180 cm

Sunday Morning (I’ve Got a Feeling I Don’t Want to Know)
2025
Oil on canvas
220 × 180 cm

Heart Cooks Brain
2024
Oil on canvas
220 × 180 cm

Under the Rug with You
2025
Oil on canvas
80 × 60 cm

Like Hands Over Me
2025
Oil on canvas
220 × 180 cm

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The Sky Too is Folding Under You
2025
Oil on canvas
220 × 180 cm

Couplet
2024
Oil and acrylic on canvas
220 × 180 cm

Background
2025
Oil on canvas
120 × 100 cm

Neck Deep
2024
Oil and acrylic on canvas
200 × 140 cm

Too Sure of the Sun
2024
Oil and acrylic on canvas
50 × 40 cm

Static
2025
Oil on canvas
50 × 40 cm

Sign of the Times
2025
Oil on canvas
50 × 40 cm

After All is Said and Done
2025
Oil on canvas
220 × 180 cm

Unseeming
2025
Oil on canvas
50 × 40 cm

Beauty Mask (What If)
2025
Oil on canvas
40 × 50 cm

Divisible Only by Self (Zeno’s Paradox)
2022
Oil on canvas
200 × 140 cm

Text

The relocation of Vancouver-born painter Adam Lupton to Berlin in 2022 was marked by a refinement of his artistic focus—both in style and subject matter. In Berlin, a city synonymous with boundless possibilities, Lupton has restricted his palette to two spectral hues and their tonal variations, and forms his visual universe around versions of himself and their worlds. This self-imposed limitation has not constrained his practice; rather, it has deepened and sharpened it. Employing only red and blue—colors emblematic of emotional extremes—Lupton constructs scenes of contemporary urban life that at first appear serene and idyllic. His works evoke a cinematic curation, yet behind the composed interiors, striking portraits, and urban vistas, subtle fissures open into existential depths.

A pervasive sense of melancholy, solitude, and yearning runs through Lupton’s paintings. Though his compositions offer a striking degree of intimacy, they also convey a persistent sense of absence. The figures in the paintings are almost always on their own—alone in expansive rooms, in oversized beds, in vast cities; alone with their reflections in mirrors and windows; alone with their thoughts. The recurring urban backdrops, red-brick facades, labyrinthine thoughts, and steady unease evoke the neurotic, introspective worlds of a Franz Kafka novel. Lupton’s exploration of the human condition can verge on the brutal: in one work, the protagonist’s innards spill from a trash can—an unsettling externalization of the inner self; in other works, to-do lists are carved into the flesh-paint of the protagonist’s skin.

Lupton evocatively represents the emotional texture of a generation suspended in an endless coming of age, a perpetual process of self-scrutiny. His practice engages with themes of mental health—particularly obsessivity, anxiety, isolation, and societal pressure—while sounding out questions of class, belonging, and masculinity. Rendered in delicate blues and pastel pinks, his imagery both invokes and deconstructs traditional tropes of male identity.

On a technical level, Lupton’s paintings are elaborate constructs. He assembles them like collages, using an array of materials to create diverse surface textures and patterns. Many of the faces and objects are monoprints, first painted on separate substrates and then transferred in reverse. Elsewhere, he employs stamping techniques using fabrics, wallpapers, and various other materials. Indirectly painting from material to canvas creates a layer of mediation between Lupton and the works, echoing the mediation obsessive compulsive disorder creates between him and his life. Lupton transposes methods associated with textile and craft traditions into painting, a domain historically dominated by masculinity. Repeated imagery such as matches, figs, daggers, flies, and strands of hair recur throughout Lupton’s paintings, imitating his own repetitive intrusive thoughts. Through this symbolism, he stitches together a language of uncertainty, anxiety, internal discomposure, and liminality across his body of work.

Following numerous solo and group exhibitions in Europe and the United States—including recent presentations at Russi Klenner and Ruttkowski—Galerie Judin will host its first solo exhibition with Adam Lupton at its Tankstelle venue during Gallery Weekend 2026.

Chronology

Biography

1987
Born in Vancouver, BC
2010
Studied Communication Design, Emily Carr University of Art and Design, Vancouver, BC
2016
Studied Fine Arts, New York Academy of Art, New York, NY

Lives and works in Berlin.

Selected Solo Exhibitions

2026
Adam Lupton, Galerie Judin, Berlin
2024
Adam Lupton: Soliloquy, Galerie Russi Klenner, Berlin
2023
Adam Lupton: Thoughts Became Things, Galerie Russi Klenner, Berlin
2022
Adam Lupton: The Long, Loud Silence, Scope BLN, Berlin
Adam Lupton: Gradually. Then Suddenly, SomoS Art House, Berlin
2020
Adam Lupton: Cerberus, GR Gallery, New York, NY
2019
Adam Lupton: TELOS, Sugarlift Project Space, New York, NY
2018
Adam Lupton: he said. he said, Gates Gallery, Colora, MD
2014
Adam Lupton: What’s In Store For Me In The Direction I Don’t Take?, Positive Negative Gallery, Vancouver, BC

Selected Group Exhibitions

2025
EXIT PARADISE. Die Miettinen Collection im Schloss Sacrow, Potsdam
Friends with Benefits, Ruttkowski;68, Cologne
Extended Blooming, Room57 Gallery, New York, NY
In Good Company, Galerie Russi Klenner, Berlin
Ethereal, EDJI Gallery, Brussels
2024
Legacy, Plato Gallery, New York, NY
2023
Press Release Cycle III, Storage Art Gallery, New York, NY
Press Release Cycle II, Storage Art Gallery, New York, NY
2022
On the Outside Looking In, Room57 Gallery, New York, NY
HIRÆTH, Prior Art Space & Phillips Auction, online
2021
Give Me Some Skin, Sugarlift Highline, New York
2020
Vision, Southhampton Arts Center, Southhampton, N
Drawn Together, Unit London, online
ME, Juxtapoz & Sugarlift, New York, NY
2018
Beyond Figuration, Cheng Xi Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing
2015
LIA Summer Show, Leipziger Internationales Atelierprogramm, Leipzig
Summer Exhibition, Flowers Gallery, New York, NY

Awards, Grants and Residencies

2026
Research and Creation Grant, Canada Council for the Arts, Ottawa
2023
Research and Creation Grant, Canada Council for the Arts, Ottawa
2022
Artist Residency, Scope BLN, Berlin
Arts Abroad Residency Grant, Canada Council for the Arts, Ottowa
2021
SomoS Artist Residency, Berlin
2020
The Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant, Montréal, QC
2017
West Nottingham Academy Eric Fischl Teaching Residency, Colora, MD
The Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant, Montréal, QC
2016
The Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant, Montréal, QC
2015
Leipzig International Art Programme Residency, Leipzig