Premonition 

Editor: So, we have Alex Gross's "Premonition," painted with acrylic. It’s got this very unsettling, yet compelling, quality... almost like a pastel-tinged apocalypse. It throws me off in the best possible way. What strikes you when you look at it? Curator: Ah, "Premonition". The beautiful unease, right? I see it as a bittersweet memory, or perhaps a distorted lullaby. The girls on the moped remind me of a sun-faded photograph from a hazy summer road trip—except one passenger seems to have skipped ahead in time. The sheep are these placid bystanders; are they observing, judging, or simply lost in the visual chaos? Editor: I hadn’t thought about them being judgmental. That billboard definitely brings in an interesting layer of corporate presence… Curator: The Coca-Cola sign looming in the background is almost like an intrusion of the mundane into this surreal landscape, wouldn't you agree? Gross uses these floating heads and discordant elements as if assembling a half-remembered dream. I see it as the collision of innocent sentimentality with a starker reality... even mortality. Where does the painting lead *you*? Editor: To a strange sense of… longing, maybe? The way everything is both familiar and utterly alien, it's like chasing a half-forgotten memory. Like you said, both beautiful, and uneasy. I think, originally, I just saw a ‘pretty picture’, but I do like the faded memory feeling. Curator: Absolutely. "Pretty picture" is only the very surface; I am grateful for that faded memory sentiment to come forward. The skill is in creating tension, holding beauty and discomfort together, right? I shall keep thinking about the judgemental sheep.