Alchemy and Star Stuff: The work of Adam Lovitz

Last winter, at a group exhibition in Wilmington, Delaware, I encountered and promptly fell in love with a group of small paintings by Adam Lovitz. Luckily I've been able to see more of his work in recent shows, including most notably a two-person exhibition with Sarah Peoples titled Who Say It Be, currently up at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. His paintings drew me in with their brazenly seductive surfaces, but there's something beyond their skins worth chewing on, a conceptual richness...