Hotel Chelsea Bathroom 1968

This is Valerio Adami’s 'Hotel Chelsea Bathroom', and it's like he’s dissected a mundane scene with a scalpel of graphic wit. The colours are dialed up, almost cartoonish, but they give the room a strange, unsettling vibe. Look at how flat everything is. Adami isn't trying to trick you into thinking this is real. Instead, it’s about reducing the world to shapes, colours, and outlines. The black outlines are so confident and unwavering. They define everything, leaving no room for doubt. But what do they define? Is it clarity, or confinement? The tiles by the bath, a grid of cold blue-violet, each perfectly placed, yet the curtain, a swathe of black, threatening to swallow the bather whole. Adami reminds me a little bit of David Hockney, in that they both find a surreal poetry in the everyday. It's the kind of image that makes you question what you think you know about seeing.