Adam Martin Disbrow (American, b. 1986), known in NFT art as AD_AD, is an Expressionist painter based in Charlottesville, Virginia.His paintings explore relationships of opposition — life and death, the sacred and the profane, the seen and the unseen — built up in layers of colour, sheen, texture and recurring personal symbols such as a gold square and genuine silver leaf.,
Disbrow studied art history, language arts and literature at the University of Virginia, graduating in 2008, and devoted himself to expressionist painting from 2014.His debut exhibition took place that July at Alexander Salazar Fine Art in San Diego, California. Around the same time he co-founded the Sperryville Artist Cooperative (SPAC), an artist community south of Washington, D.C.,He describes the gold square that recurs throughout his work as open to interpretation, representing both the sacred and the profane. He also uses silver leaf, which tarnishes and oxidizes over time, to set the ephemerality of physical art against the unchanging nature of digital art.
Disbrow joined the NFT space in March 2021, taking the name AD_AD — short for Analog x Digital Artist.,On 20 May 2021 he minted FACES/PHASES - 5 on Tezos, one of the first NFTs to carry his trademark golden square.In 2022 he curated “ADAD1”, an independent exhibition of analog-to-digital work marking the rise of AI-driven art.That May he also released AD_AD, a 226-piece collection on Ethereum.He was one of 19 artists who contributed audio/visual pieces to Laurence Fuller's narrated collection Poetics, alongside Jenni Pasanen and Von Doyle.
In 2023 he held the solo show “Flower Gardens (Daisies and Dandelions)” on Nifty Gateway. That year he also exhibited in “From Pigment to Pixel” at Colonna Contemporary in Wayne, Pennsylvania.In October 2024 his work was featured among more than 60 artists in Fakewhale's inaugural “ART MARKET DAY” on objkt.com.
