Adam Handler

Adam Handler (born in 1986 in New York) is an American contemporary artist based in New York, known for his expressive paintings, drawings and sculptures populated by ghostly figures, animals and dreamlike characters. He grew up on Long Island and spent his childhood in his grandparents' framing workshop.

Adam Handler studied life drawing in Italy, then obtained a bachelor's degree in art history in 2008 from Purchase College, State University of New York. Drawing on the imagination of childhood, memory and popular culture, he has developed a spontaneous visual language that moves between innocence and fragility. He paints in acrylic and oil stick, reworks his figures in pencil and marker, and sets flat, black-outlined characters against backgrounds scratched with hatching.

D'Stassi Art presented him in London in 2021. His work has been shown in many galleries and fairs, notably in Paris, where Cohle Gallery has shown him since 2021, and in Seoul. In 2024, the Artelli gallery in Macau devoted "Always Near You, Always" to him, his largest solo exhibition in Asia.

Ghosts have been recurring in his painting for more than ten years.