The work by Adrian Cox weaves an ongoing narrative that mythologizes the lives of a grotesque cast of protagonists. These recurring characters exist in a state of perpetual metamorphosis. As they mutate, they hybridize with mineral deposits, flora, and fauna, allowing an intense physical connection to their environment.
Their transformations cause them to take on the characteristics of their surroundings; the distinct categories of man and nature are disrupted as the boundaries between these creatures and their wilderness home become fluid and changing.
“I call these figures Border Creatures, as they are defined by these shifting and indeterminate edges. The environment in which these Border Creatures live implicitly become the Borderlands, an interstitial space that holds conflicting qualities in equilibrium. Rather than serving as a wellspring of identity for my characters, the landscape is shown to be as mutable as its inhabitants.
The scenes that unfold in the Borderlands dispel romantic notions of a pure and unchanging nature, revealing instead a natural world that depends upon its inhabitants for meaning. Likewise, the mythology of the Border Creatures is a narrative of malleable embodiment, in which the qualities that we perceive as essential to humanity are but temporary modes that shift within changing contexts.”
Adrian Cox is a painter living and working in St. Louis, Missouri. In addition to exhibiting his work nationally, Adrian is the gallery coordinator at the Millitzer Gallery, an alternative art-space in Saint Louis, and currently works as an adjunct lecturer in painting in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in Saint Louis.
Images courtesy of Adrian Cox
Discover: www.adriancoxart.com
