Harry Adams @67,000 MPH is the most expansive and ambitious exhibition of this collaborative duo’s paintings yet. Making use of the limitless gallery spaces at Black Cube the artists have selected over 113 paintings from their back-catalogue since 2010 to curate a journey through the trials, tribulations, defeats and victories of their creative practice.

Says writer/artist Neal Brown of their work[1]

“… From looking at the variousness of Adams’ paintings, there might be – or ought to be – more than just (Steve) Lowe and (Adam) Wood[2] at work, but there is not.  As there is no stated endpoint target, and as the work arises in an organic way from the interaction between the two artists, it is only when the work is in the gallery, and out of the studio, that it is called art. Adams’ work comprises the processes he employs, and the resulting paintings are the final evidence of the process. It is possible to see evidence of the artists struggling with an understanding of their own motivation, in which work is destroyed and remade, and which is similar to the self-sustaining sufficiency of the gardener, working with nature’s growth force. Indeed, there are many depictions of gardens, forbidden fruits, and expulsions in Adams’ work, and ideas of impossible natural perfection and perfect natural impossibilities occur frequently.

… Some works contain stories of magic and wonder, or horror, and many different levels of meaning, and sometimes they are locked into intense surface appearance, commanding intense pleasure ...”

In this exhibition the ambitions and scope of Adams’ work is reconsidered and expanded. Bent both in illusory scale[3] and context to match the artist’s requirements, they situate their work within vast galleries as a critically aware embrace of the extravagant devices of elite contemporary art presentation; thus making everything more elevated in tone, visually impressive and more or less meaningful depending on your critical position. Yet, whilst the paintings remain real as physical objects made with traditional materials and techniques, at a human scale in a real artist’s painting studio, with all the mess, toxic fumes and creative confusion, here they are transformed into sanctified objects of art and taken into what Adams describes as “an imaginated[4] space that exists on the fringes of the real to irreal”: for weeks immersing themselves in a digitally generated alter-reality and extending their practice into a meta gallery universe as a theatre of their own invention.

The artist sees no reason why their talents for creating illusory surfaces should not be further applied in this way - as a continued development of their paintings after they have been completed. Even those that no longer exist, having been painted over in their process of recycling their work are included, and also ones that have been sold and now hang on someone else’s walls. A feat that would be near impossible in real time and space.

In fact, even this text exists on the same semi-real plane, flirting with both documentary accuracy and flights of fancy. If it were a novel or memoir the cover would state ‘based on real events’ and the disclaimer would declare ‘some names, places and dates have been changed for narrative coherence and are not (necessarily) based on anywhere or anyone specific’.

Here the real paintings, reduced to a scale of a few hundred pixels across with the illusion of being meters high and wide, are hung together in small vibrant groups with a route through the exhibition decided by the artist. Their themes and motifs recur rhythmically throughout: (including) ancient, medieval and Renaissance art and culture, natural geological forms, religious, modernist and brutalist architecture, painterly devices, animals and birds, spiritual community, high aerial view, cultivated land, ecstatic landscape, sky, sunset, the black sun/planet/circle and the many evidences of mankind’s machinations and wickedness[5].

The artist has also written notes to accompany the gallery tour, sometimes to describe specific works or tell stories of their creation, or speak in more general terms about their practice. These can be downloaded (via a link below the installation shots) and read in an accompaniment to the installation views as the spectator clicks through the galleries on the Black Cube website. Ideally in the comfort of their own home on a large screen with a glass/mug/cup/bottle of their favourite beverage in hand.

Harold Rosenbloom Sr[6], August 2025

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[1] Extract from Harry Adams and Mountain Religion written for Water Springs Eternal from the Impossible Garden of Light, L-13 Press 2016.

[2] Harry Adams is the name used to present the collaborative paintings of artist’s Steve Lowe and Adam Wood. They also operate under the name of STOT21stCplanB and Steve Lowe is founder of the L-13 Light Industrial Workshop and Private Ladies and Gentlemen’s Club for Art, Leisure and the Disruptive Betterment of Culture.

[3] Most of the paintings in this exhibition are exaggerated in illusory scale, seeming much bigger in the exhibition spaces than they really are. Some of the more monumental works are only slightly exaggerated.

[4] ‘Imaginated’ an invented word meaning not just imagined but conjured up into a semi-real state that can be related to in a concrete way.

[5] Paraphrased and updated from Harry Adams and Mountain Religion by Neal Brown.

[6] Harold Rosenbloom (Jr and Sr) is the alter-ego/pen name used by Steve Lowe when writing texts about artists he works with to aid in subjectively distancing himself for a greater critical overview and creative licence. Rosenbloom being his maternal grandmother’s maiden name and Harry being his paternal grandfather’s first name.