Adam Alessi is a self-taught artist whose tense and bizarre oil and flashe paintings depict tricksters, dolls, masks and puppets amidst distorted perspectives. Alessi’s work, much like the charlatans it is depicting, is confusing and ambiguous, tricking the viewer with its stretched out figures and long and guilty noses. Such artistic hoax contradicts the essential purpose of logic, which aligns that which is external with that which is internal. Instead comes a mischievous blend of inseparable truths and lies, with bodies seemingly human that are in fact fake silhouettes. Alessi’s practice is especially impactful when considered alongside the real-life instances of the media and those in power “tricking” the populations in times of crisis. His work becomes alarming and provokes anxiety over the human vulnerability to lies, frauds and misrepresentation. At the same time, however, it gives space to the unknown and the uncontrollable and creates a reality of magic, spells and fate. The darkness of Alessi’s work is threatening, not so much to human truthfulness, but more importantly, to an often reductive impulse to know it all. ...
