Persistent Teenage Gestures

Mixed-media installation. 2018.
~180cm x 220cm x 160cm. Electric guitar, amplifier, bowling ball, guitar pedals, electronics, pink paint.


Persistent Teenage Gestures foregrounds a sense of buried narrative, developing an ambiguous, unresolved, noir-like sensibility.

We encounter a curious scene: a smashed guitar, a bowling ball, an amplifier sawed in half and still feeding back. The seemingly haphazard arrangement is soaked in paint, it’s performative chaos united in a singular gesture.

The work is an accumulation three destructive acts; some clean, methodical, almost surgical while others are blunt and coarse, improvisational. The sound emanating from the installation persists, continuously evolving; An ongoing resonant undulation, an extended solo, an elegy to nothing in particular.

Commissioned by Eastern Bloc (Montreal QC).









Photos by Emily Gan.


© 2024 Adam Basanta