Adrian Cox

Adrian Cox uses oil painting to showcase a suspended mythic reality called ‘Borderlands’, a kind of Edenic ecosystem of dense forests and expansive waterscapes, featuring elements of both pre-human and post-human culture. The inhabitants of Borderlands are known as ‘Border Creatures’, hybrid, non-binary and fluid identities that are simultaneously human, plant, mineral and viscera. These recurring characters perform social roles such as scientists, artists, gardeners, musicians and mystics and go by names such as ‘Big Thinker’, ‘Glow Gardener’ and ‘Veiled Healer’. Importantly, they live in harmony with their surroundings, spending their lives in quest of self-knowledge and understanding their relationship to each other and their environment.

Also part of this seemingly idyllic world are the Border Creatures’ antagonists, known as ‘Specters’, which are represented by bright, glowing energy forms. The relationship between these two different mythological species form the narrative tension of this ever-growing series of works.

Cox’s paintings are unmistakable in appearance, most of them featuring a colour palette of highly saturated pinks, oranges, blues and violets, reminiscent of the colours of a sunset or sunrise. Besides being visually arresting, it is also emblematic of a liminal or twilight space, where divisions between self and environment are not so clear, where the future and the past often mix together, where the beautiful and grotesque are difficult to distinguish, and where identities are more complex than they are clear-cut. According to Cox, this sets up a dialogue between ideas of the Monstrous and the Other, and cultural understandings of the natural vs the transgressive.

Throughout this dense and continually evolving mythology that exists in this body of work, pagan and religious themes feature heavily, where the characters enact rituals around ideas of transfiguration, penitence, redemption and sacrifice. As ‘Other’ as this strange world is in surface appearances, it is also surprisingly familiar or timeless in concept, as the most enduring myths of our culture are. Additionally, there is an autobiographical aspect to these works. Cox has spoken about how growing up in the southern state of Georgia, USA, his queer family had to camouflage socially as a way of survival in a culturally conservative environment. There are hints to this personal history in various rainbow motifs, such as shawls that disguise figures, and ringed portals in the sky.

Coming from a fine arts and academic background, Cox (born 1988), graduated from the University of Georgia in 2010 with Bachelor of Fine Arts with Honours, where he acquired a classical foundation in technical skills. He then pursued a Master of Fine Arts at Washington University in Saint Louis, Missouri (2012), where he was able to cultivate a deeper conceptual and philosophical dimension to his practice.

Strongly influenced and inspired by art history, Cox often includes both compositional and contextual references in his work. Besides the ode to Arcimboldo that his composite characters embody, Cox also draws eclectic inspiration from Rembrandt, 19th century Romantic landscape genres, and Enlightenment works, among a wealth of other influences.

Cox’s artistic process is every bit as meticulous and nuanced as the appearance of his works. As well as the highly developed philosophical foundations of his practice, he has also evolved his technical methods in tandem with his narrative. Starting with thumbnail sketches, which are gradually developed into digital studies, he builds sculptural maquettes of every character in his world, composed of cheap materials and found objects. With the aid of coloured lights, he then uses these as the studies to paint his individualised character forms.

His techniques and methods for painting with oils involve a similarly customised process. Over time, he has developed a method of combining underpainting with various layerings of transparent, semi-transparent and opaque colour. This results in a luminous, glowing quality to his backgrounds and figures, where it appears that the works possess an almost tangible depth and life force of their own.

Cox’s work has been extensively featured across multiple print publications, including VICE, Juxtapoz, Beautiful Bizarre, Hi-Fructose, Heavy Metal Magazine, PROHBTD, and Anatomy Rocks = Flesh and Bones in Contemporary Art. In 2020, he also designed a tour poster for the band, Tool. He currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California.

Adrian Cox in his studio

Adrian Cox is represented by Beinart Gallery and has had several solo exhibitions –Sensory Garden in 2017, Awakenings in 2019, Lights in the Forest in 2020, plus is a regular contributor to Beinart Gallery’s annual group show, Small Works (2016 -2019).

Interview with Adrian Cox.

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