EXPO Chicago: Marisa Adesman

For EXPO Chicago, Anat Ebgi is pleased to announce a solo presentation by Marisa Adesman. This presentation continues her recent solo exhibition Forklore, on view at our Los Angeles gallery in 2021.

Adesman’s highly detailed scenarios evoke surrealist painters of art history such as Leonora Carrington and Méret Oppenheim as well as dark 1980s animated cartoons. Her compositions disorient how we think about domestic space and explore ideas about the strength and fragility of women. For example, Balancing Act depicts a nude woman laying on her back, her glass legs elevated toward the darkened sky while balancing a vase on her feet. The work is a mysterious allegory of appetites, equilibrium, immortality, and femininity.

Adesman’s humorous, thought-provoking paintings often depict ordinary objects in bizarre contexts and striking states of shapeshifting and mystical liquification. This can be seen in the wallpaper Adesman created specifically for EXPO Chicago, which depicts a luminous vine-like fork pattern. The fork, a recurring motif for the artist, symbolizes civilization, consumption and control. Her precise draftsmanship and delicate brushwork draw viewers into these fantasies, revealing insights into the human condition and challenging our perceptions of reality.

Marisa Adesman (b. 1991, Roslyn, NY) received her MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI in 2018 and her BFA from Washington University, St. Louis, MO in 2013. She has exhibited work widely including at the Contemporary Art Museum (CAM), St. Louis, MO; Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles, CA; Black Mountain College Museum, Ashville, NC; and Mead Art Museum, Amherst College; Amherst, MA. Her first solo museum exhibition is forthcoming at KMAC, Louisville, KY. Adesman lives and works in St. Louis, MO.