Kim Adams is an internationally renowned artist, whose sculptural assemblages in different scales, ranging from miniature models to large public works, investigate suburban culture and particularly the relationship between the automobile and the home. Adams was born in Edmonton in 1951 and studied painting at the Northwest Institute of the Arts (1974) and the Kootenay School of Art (1974 to 1975). He graduated from the University of Victoria in 1977, and completed an MFA there in 1979. His formal education gave him a sound technical foundation, yet it was Adams’s adventures skipping school and wandering the streets that truly stimulated his creativity. He began photographing vehicles that had been altered or customized by their owners. Though by the mid-1970s he had already received attention for some abstract colour field paintings, he soon switched gears and started making sculptural installations.

Adams makes artwork using non-traditional art materials, incorporating found objects, products from hardware stores, hobby shops and even wrecking yards. With skill and precision, he morphs and fuses these objects, whether they be model houses or automobile parts into strange new hybrids. His work often spills out of the safe domestic space of the gallery into the streets, where he parks seemingly mobile, large sculptural objects resembling dystopian vehicles on the gallery’s curb. He has also made permanent site-specific public installations, and in 1997 was invited to participate in the international exhibition Skulptur Projekte 97 in Münster, Germany.

The micro is just as present as the macro in Adams’s work. He creates miniature worlds with tiny figures populating scale models such as in Bruegel-Bosch Bus, which is composed of a multitude of characters and places (inhabiting strange scenarios not typical of the hobbyist’s imagination). There are skyscrapers and factories, but also store bought items, including plastic superhero toys, all coexisting on a base of a cut-away Volkswagen bus. Adams unleashes these miniature worlds with a sense of unpredictability and humour, while allowing for reflection on our suburban culture and its many absurd customs.

Adams has been exhibited widely including at the Art Gallery of Ontario, the National Gallery of Canada, and many international venues such as the Sydney Biennale of Contemporary Art, the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art and Musée d’art contemporain in Bordeaux. In 2001 he created a permanent public installation for the Vancouver Art Gallery. He received numerous awards including the Governor-General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts (2014), a Guggenheim Fellowship (2013) and the Gershon Iskowitz Prize from the Art Gallery of Ontario (2012).