Adam Beris @ OTI Hong Kong

Despite the ongoing protests and civil unrest, I squeezed in some time to visit the OTI gallery to take a glance at the Adam Beris exhibit. I was able to visit this exhibit thanks to Juxtapoz Magazine's article related to this post. 

I never knew who Adam Beris was until I saw this exhibit, and I was very glad to be able to visit the gallery to look at the work live. 

The photos do not do the paintings justice as they are much more colorful than when compared to the images that I have posted. The yellow lighting that the gallery used to present the work really makes the colors pop, and if you ever get the chance to see his work, you will feel that colorful, vibrant energy pop out of the canvas. 

When you enter the gallery you will be able to get a whiff of a strange musky scent that I wasn't too fond of, but it was a familiar smell. I presumed it was coming from the canvases, and the materials that were used to paint it. I assumed it was oil paints, mainly because of the scent, but the texture of the paint seemed oddly plastic. The paint seemed to have been squeezed out of the tubes immediately onto the canvas itself, leaving almost to absolutely no room for any kind of brushwork. 

I presumed there could be some kind of marking system that the artist may have used to plan out his paintings. The level of design and composition seemed like there some sort of planning involvement before the final piece was produced. Maybe some kind of light pencil mark, but there was no evidence of such that was remaining on the canvas.

The figures, or more so the portraits of the people involved in the paintings reminded me of Donald Trump. In some of the paintings there were commercial depictions of recognizable objects that were meticulously organized into columns and rows. A lot of these small images reminded me of emoticons, or symbols, that were either poking fun at consumer culture, or it was celebrating the reality of the consumer jungle that we live in.

Whatever the artworks mean, it was a really fun experience viewing these art pieces.