Trey Abdella Is a New Kind of Bad Boy Artist

In Trey Abdella’s gargantuan paintings, the American Dream is alive and well—or at least hooked up to some kind of terrible machine invented in a moment of desperation, keeping the blood pumping if only by a technicality. His beautiful blond figures have bright-blue eyes, but no warmth; their grayish skin looks corpse-like.

Abdella grew up in West Virginia, surrounded by poverty and people who would eventually vote to “Make America Great Again.” He wound up in New York in 2013 after following a former girlfriend who had stood out in their art department at West Virginia University for her unusual ambition. In the city, Abdella transferred to the School of Visual Arts and majored in illustration; the way his pictures tell stories—often, they veer past the illustrative toward the cinematic—betrays this background.