Lorenzo Amos, “Brandon Reading” (2024).
Oil on linen, 72 x 60 x 1.75 in. Courtesy of the artist and Gratin.

Lorenzo Amos Captures Fleeting Moments

At Gratin, paintings by Lorenzo Amos reek of turpentine. Lonesome figures slouch in stifling New York apartments; a cacophony of energetic scribbles swallows them whole. These young, somber city dwellers turn their gazes downward, entranced or intoxicated in a state of torpor—fragile, anxious, detached, but impenetrable.

Amos’s solo exhibition, No Regrets Because You’re My Sunshine, showcases a coherent body of work that channels the inertia of solitude. Born in 2002, the artist is a New York City native, all too familiar with the characteristic interiors of prewar apartments or rooms that smell like a vintage record shop. In this series of paintings on display, he captures the muffled hum of growing pains by situating “a demimonde of friends, other artists, and associates”—as described in the press release written by Max Lakin—within constricted psychological spaces. Sandwiched between the picture plane and the rugged, dizzying backdrop of studio walls, each figure seems poised to tumble out of the canvas.

Lorenzo Amos, “Leo laying on the carpet” (2024).
Oil on linen, 80 x 102.5 x 2 in. Courtesy of the artist and Gratin.

Amos patterns his canvases with brushstrokes that oscillate between the asemic, the gestural, and the diaristic, evoking Cy Twombly’s aesthetic sensibility and Edward Hopper’s emotional tenderness. Textured marks of crimson, umber, and burnt sienna form poems, hidden letters, tattoos, body hair, and textile surfaces. A chaotic network of symbols and non-symbols leaves the viewer on an incomplete quest to unveil meaning. In “Leo laying on the carpet” (2024), a topless, bearded man slumps against a wooden door next to an open beer bottle. We get a glimpse of his identity and selfhood through the tattoos on his skin, as well as the block of text resembling a journal entry that reads, “I can’t lie I confess to having […] through much thought […]” The flow of textural interpretation is constantly interrupted by the impossibility of legibility. The word “FUNERAL” is tattooed on the figure’s right shoulder in all caps—somewhat ominous, but a pithy memento mori.

The show’s title piece, “No Regrets Because You're My Sunshine” (2024), depicts a state of levitation. A playful, childlike line drawing of a building occupies the center of the canvas. To its left is the shadowy contour of a dejected figure resting head in hand, as though frustrated with the entropy and messiness surrounding him. His feet hover above the floor, rejecting the curse of three-dimensionality. This sketch-like quality is echoed by the figures in “Girl on Wall (Analiese)” and “The Lovers (blue period),” forming a drastic contrast with Armando, Gab, Leo, and Brandon’s tangible bodies.

Lorenzo Amos, “No Regrets Because You’re My Sunshine” (2024).
Oil on linen, 72 x 60 x 1.75 in. Courtesy of the artist and Gratin.

The affective depth in Amos’s painterly renderings stems from sustained observation. In an interview with writer Qingyuan Deng, gallerist Paul Henkel describes how Amos would sit with his models for hours, only to take iPhone photos of them and use these as reference images. The process is simultaneously fast and slow. It is at this intersection of immediacy, spatial depth, and artificial flattening that Amos meets his muses.

No Regrets Because You’re My Sunshine offers an escape from the mind-numbing bliss of sobriety, as these intimate portraits allow growing pains to be experienced uninhibitedly. Amos identifies drama, brokenness, and overwhelm in the most mundane and stagnant, rendering them with an artistic charm that’s almost baroque by nature. Tumultuous brushstrokes come together to construct a sense of psychological realism, embodying the confusion of navigating a world and city full of uncertainties. Amos’s work is young, claustrophobic, and internal. It’s also on the brink of gushing out of the confines of the rectangular canvases. The anxious ponderance of youth itself is made ever so human and vulnerable. At Gratin, Amos taps into the psyche of individual subjects while still channeling the autobiographical, telling a story of multiples.



Lorenzo Amos: No Regrets Because You’re My Sunshine is on view at Gratin, 76 Avenue B, New York, between October 24th and December 19th, 2024.