Ador

French graffiti artist Ador makes the silly sublime. His murals and paintings hold up a funhouse mirror to contemporary society, deftly blending whimsical exaggeration with biting satire to both celebrate and skewer the human experience.   

Ador (real name undisclosed) was born and raised in Nantes, and painted his first wall in 2005. His signature characters — bug-eyed, beak-nosed humanoids redolent of fairy tales, comic strips, Edward Gorey picture books and other childhood rites of passage — now decorate cityscapes from Shanghai to San Francisco, and are immortalized in animated short films including Eratus, Belicus and Morbus Fabula. Vertical Gallery has worked with Ador since he first visited our space in 2014; a year later, he returned to Chicago alongside fellow French street artist Semor to co-headline a Vertical pop-up show and to paint a pair of nearby murals. We presented Ador’s first Chicago solo exhibit, ‘No Protected Species,’ in 2022.