Adrian Cox

"Bather" Oil on canvas, 41" x 66" 2012

"The Lovers" oil on canvas, 34" x 47" 2012

"Border Creature: Portrait III" Oil on canvas 31" x 24" 2012

"The Great Orator" Oil on canvas 36" x 36" 2012

"Border Creature: Portrait II" Oil on Canvas 31" x 24" 2012

And now for something completely different. Fine art does not usually mash-up so nicely with horror and science-fiction. The artist Christian van Minnen uses some similar effects but with a more tongue in cheek approach. These grotesque portraits of mangled and bubbling flesh reminded me immediately of a slew of great horror and sci-fi images: the monster in John Carpenter's remake of the Thing, the tantalizing but disappointing transporter accident from Star Trek, the morphing monstrous evolution of William Hurt at the end of "Altered States". I'm sure there's more and better more contemporary examples out there. The shock of such imagery in a film often has much to do with it's fleetingness, the mere hint that allows the imagination to take over. But here Adrian Cox overwhelms all that with weight, solidity and detail. The horror just stays there. Until you begin to grow accustomed to it. And that becomes a new layer to the nature of the horror. Because the horror is just flesh adrift in nature, longing for connection with that nature, with other flesh, with anything that might ground it more firmly to life, not realizing that it is mortality that defines it. The horror is our own existence; grotesque, pitiful, sad and beautiful all at once.
You can see more at www.adriancoxart.com
or at Ann Nathan Gallery in Chicago