Adam Beris’ earliest work was rooted in representational figure and landscape painting, but a surprising experiment in 2016 with hardened oil paint sparked a marked shift in his practice. The thick globs of paint that emerged from the tube were manipulated into shapes of icon-like forms of the mundane–fruits, faces, letters, food, cigarettes, and more–that Beris coined “glyphs” in an attempt to distinguish them from the baggage of the word “emoji.” 

Originally from Wisconsin, and now based in Los Angeles, Beris’ experimentation in form led to a new style he’s since perfected, almost like a cake designer wielding frosting, to create works notable for their intriguing mix of humor, critique, and creativity to explore ideas of Americana, nostalgia, and the unexpected narratives that emerge from seemingly random groupings of everyday objects. Earlier works deploying his signature style, such as Double Note (2021) use a multitude of glyphs that resemble the output of a loser’s slot machine’s pull but invite the reader to create meaning among the seemingly random flood of tiny images. Meanwhile, works such as Chapel (2022) play with the idea of “subtraction by addition” and depict a canvas awash in earthy, grass-like tones with scattered, submerged glyphs amidst the blades–almost like what you might see in a park in the aftermath of a cookout. 

More recent works play with larger, cartoonish forms and symbols, riffing on how classic American figures like Bugs Bunny or Elmer Fudd can be thought of as both harmless and historically loaded at the same time. 

Beris’ strongest influences include the work of Édouard Manet, and in particular the underappreciated humor in the choice to place a bullfrog amidst Luncheon on the Grass (1862), a transgressive work of it’s era that upended conventions–in this case gender and sexuality–in a manner Beris aspires to by “bastardizing” the notion of oil paint as a medium solely reserved for controlled, careful brush strokes. 

During his residency in Miami, Beris created new work in a frenzy, focusing on “small paintings about big ideas” that feature familiar cartoonish forms, but also upend the relationship between object, subject, foreground, and background, as in The Young and the Restless (2024).