REVERIE 2020

Alex Gross’s hyper-real painting, Reverie, feels like wandering into a dreamscape of synthetic colours and surreal mashups. I imagine Gross in his studio, carefully layering thin glazes of oil paint to create this weird, meticulous composition. The sky is so light and airy, like a classical landscape, but then there's these floating celebrity faces and animal-human hybrids. It's like the artist is merging digital culture with something more ancient and earthy. I can only begin to imagine what it was like to put that together! There is a tension between its smooth surfaces and the unsettling nature of its content, which makes you feel slightly off-kilter. The shopping bags, the tulips, the woman holding her smartphone—the artist has merged these icons of beauty and commerce into something else entirely. It reminds me of other painters like Lisa Yuskavage or John Currin, who also play with the figure in strange and subversive ways. Gross creates a space where things aren't quite right, and that’s the point. He’s asking us to consider the ways we consume and create images, inviting us to be playful while provoking a little bit of unease.