The Art

Specifically engaged with the languages of Saturday morning cartoons, comics, toys, and, to some extent, science fiction.  I am interested in creating imaginary worlds or landscapes that evoke a nostalgia for toys, play-sets, and animated environments. Ranging from painting, drawing, sculpture, to comics, my art practice excavates the imaginary worlds to which we once retreated as children yet as adults we try to shed.

Constructed through cartoons and video games, these landscapes linger in our subconscious as sites of play that we may try to recover as adults but can never quite grasp again.  Either built out of MDF and laser-cut acrylic or rendered with pen ink and pixels, my work attempts to manifest these worlds in material reality or pictorial illusion, as sites of nostalgia, play, fantasy, and projection that tempt us yet never quite allow us to cross the boundary between the real and the imaginary. Slipping in and out of physical and psychic realities, the objects- sculptures, paintings or comic books- serve as liminal junctures, wherein the cute and the sinister roll around in the clouds.

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The Artist

Originally from East Tennessee, Adam Fotos is a Chicago-based artist working in paintings, drawing, sculpture and comics.  He received his MFA from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and is currently adjunct faculty at Chicago State University and the College of DuPage.  He is also a teaching artist with Chicago-area youth through Urban Gateways and Marwen, two arts non-profits that reach out into underserved communities.   While his fine art explores a nostalgia for the imaginary landscapes of childhood, he also is an active comics artist, having published over 10 books with comics from Dragon and Goat to Cloud Arcadia.