Adam Alessi is a self-taught painter who composes an esoteric realm with a host of familiar yet uncanny characters. Beginning with a color field or a tenebrous background, Alessi incorporates figures which emerge from his dreams, confronting moments that veer the line between fantasy and nightmare. Rife with art historical references—one might find a corner ornamented with quilted patterns or a sardonic visage that conjures grotesque masks—his work inspires a simultaneous desire to look and repel, perhaps in nostalgia or acknowledgment of the anxieties and comedies that exist in our somnolent and lucid states.