OCHI is pleased to participate in the fourth iteration of Barely Fair, the invitational 1:12 scale artist-run art fair, to take place at Color Club, located at 4146 N. Elston Avenue in Chicago’s Irving Park, from April 12 through April 21, 2024. The gallery will present new works by artist Adam Beris, a miniature prelude to Beris’ solo exhibition, Fantastic Best Wishes, opening on April 20 at OCHI, Los Angeles. Barely Fair will commence with a vernissage on Friday, April 12^th from 6:00 to 10:00 PM CDT.

Mining the cultural landscape left in the wake of pre-Wi-Fi American consumerism, Adam Beris' new paintings are composed like interventionist haikus. Working with imagery rooted in campaigns for popular culture that targeted Midwestern audiences in the late 90s and early aughts—freeze frames from old reruns, Superbowl commercials and radio jingles, logos from national conglomerates, magazine ads ripped from content, locally-sourced delivery menu graphics, esoteric children’s books—Beris collages, obliterates, and respawns found signs and symbols using eccentric scale shifts and massive quantities of extruded paint.

In hand-drawn animation, smear frames are stylistic visualizations of motion that distort the subject as it jumps from one place to another or duplicates parts of the subject’s body to imply rapid motion. Though smears were invented to saved time and money, animators continue to employ them for their nostalgic, comedic, and aesthetic appeal. Like a cherry on a sundae, Beris places a version of art history’s smears—abstract paintings and sculptures crafted from paint—onto appropriated cartoon smears.

One liners, zingers, quips, memes, inside jokes, and the like are essential to Beris’ practice, which he astutely combines with visual puns, slippages, decontextualized details, and statements of fact. “Painting is just a series of tricks and aha moments,” Beris says, describing his work as an accumulation of dumb jokes. This is more or less ironic considering the level of difficulty in executing Beris’ tricks—part of the joke is the effortless or casualness in appearance while understanding the high level of technical proficiency required to make the work. “You have to wade through sewage before you can swim in clear water.”

Adam Beris (b. 1987, Milwaukee, WI) received a dual degree in Painting and Creative Writing from Kansas City Art Institute in 2009. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at venues including Tang Contemporary Art and OTI in Hong Kong, China; Primary in Miami, FL; MCC Longview Cultural Center in Lee’s Summit, MO; The Omaha Creative Institute in Omaha, NE; and OCHI in Los Angeles, CA and Sun Valley, ID. Beris’s work has been featured in publications including e-flux, Hyperallergic, Contemporary Art Review Los Angeles, Miami New Times, Juxtapoz, Hypebeast, and Maake. Beris currently lives and works in Los Angeles, CA and is represented by OCHI.