Advancing in line towards the beastly architecture of a roller coaster unleashes an unusual mental and physical jolt in soon-to-be riders. Adrenaline surges, fear melds with excitement, and the cartoonish tracks ahead beckon us forward even while repelling us at a core level with quiet terror. To experience this ride requires throwing our intrinsic desire for safety into the wind, and in many ways, its uncomfortable draw serves as apt metaphor for life itself, where acting boldly and taking chances is often rewarded.

Spiraling loops and inhumane dips are par for the course with these teetering constructions that have become a lingering inspiration and motif for Alex Hutton, who paints the strange pleasure devices with representational accuracy using expressive, almost choppy, brushwork. Up close, Hutton’s portraits devolve into staccato painted lines and wet-on-wet color smears that veer towards total abstraction. This opposes the actual world order, where swirling tracks at such great heights become increasingly real and rickety as we approach. The artist seems to infer that nothing is what it seems; it’s all what we make of it.

With so much promise and excitement tied to these amusements, what happens when the thrill is blocked, or kept, from us? “Coming Soon,” the signs say, but the barrier materials and artificial netting obscuring the rides in Hutton’s larger works are tattered, bearing the scars of time and their cheap materiality. It seems coming soon is still a ways away, or worse, it has already come and gone. Despite this disappointment, the rides continue drawing us in, bringing forth thoughts of speeding along ghostly tracks in open-air cars that inexplicably never arrive. Are these blockades protecting us from the chaos of a crazy world or keeping us from its most sublime joy? Perhaps it’s a bit of both.

Alex Hutton (b. 1992, Stuart, FL) received a BFA from The Cooper Union School of Art in 2014 and is currently based in Brooklyn, NY. Hutton’s work has been exhibited at Europa (New York, NY), Amity (Brooklyn, NY), 5-50 Gallery (LIC, NY) and Louis Reed (New York, NY). Hutton’s work has also been featured in Maake Magazine.