Details:
① Artwork:
Blindfold
This oil painting embraces the excitement of the unknown and the possibilities or memories we find in the dark. In the image, a face wears a rust-colored blindfold that extends to both edges of the canvas. Meanwhile, the corners of the person’s lips lift sharply upward, revealing a smirk of either anxiety or ecstasy – or perhaps both – in the face of sensory deprivation.
Adam Alessi is a self-taught painter of esoteric realms consisting of familiar yet uncanny characters. As if emerging from his dreams, Alessi frames moments that walk the line between fantasy and nightmare. Rife with art historical references, they simultaneously inspire a desire to look and repel: perhaps in nostalgia or acknowledgment of the anxieties and comedies in our somnolent and lucid states.
Specs:
③ Artist:
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 Rife with art historical references—one might find a corner ornamented with quilted patterns or a sardonic visage that conjures grotesque masks—his work inspires a simultaneous desire to look and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.
Adam Alessi was born in 1994 in Camarillo, CA, and lives in Los Angeles, CA.
The artist has mounted solo exhibitions at C L E A R I N G in New York City, NY (2023) and Brussels, Belgium (2022), and Smart Objects in Los Angeles, CA (2020).
His work has been included in numerous group exhibitions at C L E A R I N G in New York City, NY, and Los Angeles, CA (2023); Matthew Brown in Los Angeles, CA (2023); and Public Gallery in London, UK (2021), among others.