“My way of getting back at the abstract art was making realistic abstract art,” he said. “It’s obviously these abstract paintings, but so much more realistic than paintings of people, because I’m representing paint with paint.”
Oftentimes, the studio becomes a messy mood board, with things taped or tacked up to provide either direct or indirect inspiration. There’s a photograph of himself that I’ll later see, in painted form, in the middle of a painting at the Rubell.
“That’s me as a kid, painting,” he said. “Everybody’s always like, ‘When did you start painting?’ And so I always keep that photo up.”
The studio is going to get pretty full in the next few months. He’s got a few works in a group show at Max Hetzler in Berlin that’s filled with heavy hitters, and he’s making work for a private museum in the same city that will be up for years. Abillama is opening a permanent outpost of Gratin in Paris next year—“Everyone wants to spend money in Paris,” he said, by way of explanation—and Amos will have a show there. Certainly, there are bigger stages to come.
“He puts so much pressure on himself—he’s never satisfied, never, and I think that’s a great sign of a great creator,” Abillama said. “He’s never complete. It is just like, ‘No, I got to do more. No, there’s something wrong.’ And I’m looking at it like: That’s like the greatest thing I ever saw! He is like, ‘No, it’s not.’”
And Miami was a huge anthem—thousands filtered through the room at the Rubell Museum, and afterward, Abillama had a late dinner event at a house that Dwyane Wade sold in 2021 for $22 million. It was an appropriately lavish celebration, with prominent European dealers chowing down on steak, staring out at the Biscayne Bay, and waiting to see what happens to Amos next.
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