Adam Handler (b. 1986 in Queens, NY) uses bold neon colors, dynamic brush strokes and patchwork-like textures to create an imaginative world where childlike wonder, solitude and connection go hand in hand. Due to the dynamism that characterizes his brushwork, Handler’s art has been likened to that of Willem de Kooning, and Handler himself describes how de Kooning’s ability to depict a human almost without rendering its body in a recognizable way has inspired him. However, unlike the art of Willem de Kooning and other Abstract Expressionists whose art is often explicitly foreboding and unsettling, Handler’s pastel and neon color palette and faux-naif style create a marked tension between the unsettling and the cute, further emphasizing the feeling that something unknowable is happening beneath the surface. Handler’s signature ghost and girl figures which have inhabited his works throughout his career are archetypical forms, some of the first things many start to draw in childhood – a human and a simplified ghost. The power of these simple forms alludes to their significance for us as human beings. Almost everyone is hit by a feeling of recognition when seeing them for the first time – they are a part of a universal human core, and this is what Handler is trying to reconnect with through his art. Adam Handler’s passion for art was nurtured from an early age as his grandparents owned a framing company. He started studying art formally at 18 years old, when he went to Italy to study classical figure drawing. In 2008, he graduated from the State University at Purchase with a BA in Art History.  Furthermore, he has studied Craft Design, Art Restoration, Sculpture and printing color photography with Debra Mesa-Pelly. Since 2008, he has exhibited his work in museums and galleries all over the world, from New York to Seoul, to Paris and London.