Adrift III 2020

James Jean made *Adrift III*, and everything about the making of it, the colour, the line, feels intensely considered. The surface is smooth and polished, it almost has the sheen of an advertisement; which makes sense, given his background. But I think that’s part of the point, that it sucks you in with its own kind of aesthetic gravity. Look at the way those colours are used, that pink and grey-blue, which shouldn’t work together at all, but they really do. It’s a bit like the way Elizabeth Murray would build forms out of colour, letting the relationships between tones suggest a kind of spatial dynamic. The way the body is rendered is beautiful, idealized, but not in a way that feels lifeless or contrived. Jean always reminds me a bit of Yoshitaka Amano, that same fluidity of line and dreamy palette, but he's very much doing his own thing. Art is so exciting that it's just a big conversation between artists across time. The idea is not to be too literal, to let the work breathe.