“What Would Giotto Do?” A Review of Anthony Adcock at Addington Gallery

Anthony Adcock, “Giotto’s Way,” 2023, oil and 23.5k gold on aluminum, 33″ x 23″/Photo: Anthony Adcock

As his new solo show at Addington Gallery ably demonstrates, Anthony Adcock continues to be one of Chicago’s most gifted artists. Head-spinningly detailed, his trompe-l’oeil technique, fused with a sharp eye for understated imagery, typically provokes awestruck gasps of “how’d he do that?” from the uninitiated. While the road signs, plywood panels and industrial detritus that comprise his visual vocabulary are almost dispiritingly mundane, the painter’s technical prowess is anything but.

The exhibition, titled “Gridlock,” takes as its starting point the question “What would Giotto do?” and then figuratively applies it to a variety of visual encounters, from the things you see while stuck in traffic to the mouthwatering sights of a Sunday cookout. While the hypothetical invocation of the late medieval master is curiously suspect in an age of areligiosity, the extended metaphor it creates resonates subtly throughout the show.

Anthony Adcock, “The Muck,” 2023, oil and 23.5k gold leaf on aluminum, 15″ x 10″/Photo: Anthony Adcock

All of the wall-mounted works (save for two) are five-sided, painted on a metallic surface (usually aluminum) and shaped like Giotto’s great gilded masterpiece the “Ognissanti Madonna.” Though there’s no spiritual redemption on offer here, Adcock’s paintings so thoroughly mimic the surfaces and textures of weary and weather-beaten road signage that they, like the icon paintings they obliquely reference, operate as both signs and signifiers as well as being and actuality.

Unlike the contemporary reduction of virtually every facet of life to material and brute facticity, in the classical and early Christian tradition art was believed to exist on several levels simultaneously. A statue of Athena, or later a depiction of the Virgin Mary or the head of Christ would not simply be considered “signs” or “stand-ins” for the real thing, but rather windows upon or conduits to them. Analogous to the Hindu concept of darshan, you see your God, and perhaps more terrifyingly, your God sees you.

Anthony Adcock, “A Cautionary Tale,” 2023, oil and 23.5k gold on aluminum, 15″ x 10″/Photo: Anthony Adcock

Adcock’s sheer memetic skill teases out these latent notions from some of the least sacred sights one could imagine. “The Muck” depicts the surface of a gnarly, viscous, grime-encrusted Day-Glo striped traffic-control sign with such precise painterly acumen that it can no longer be rightfully considered only a representation of its prototype but has in fact at the same time become indistinguishable from it. This potent effect stands in contrast to Adcock’s numerous and jaw-droppingly realistic Hydrocal reproductions of various tools, coins, nuts and bolts. Though superficially identical to their model, their fragility and lack of functionality assert they can never be more than a simulacrum.

As a union ironworker, Adcock locates the conceptual center of his work in an ongoing inquiry into authorship, authenticity, value and their relationship to labor. These are questions that have persisted since last century and as such, perhaps not as compelling as they once were. Nonetheless, seeing through the lens of the painter’s guiding thought “WWGD?,” those willing to look beyond mere semiotics will have new and more provocative answers.

There’s no doubt that Adcock is a master of his medium. But once the shock and awe of the technical triumph has worn off, the actual aesthetic pleasure from savoring the objects can be disappointingly short-lived. Although tantalizingly brief, two works in particular, the painted drawing “Figure” and the pseudo-landscape “Roadside” point toward new directions that satisfy both the urge to look and look again, and to think and think some more.

“Anthony Adcock: Gridlock” is on view at Addington Gallery, 704 North Wells, through May 4.