Brad Hoseley: Room 208 sets its psychodrama in a hotel room — familiar and infinitely strange — populated by a consistent yet anonymous male figure, flowers wi…Brad Hoseley: Room 208 sets its psychodrama in a hotel room — familiar and infinitely strange — populated by a consistent yet anonymous male figure, flowers with Samuel Steward's signature phallic centers, cigarettes, oranges, and cracked vases. Steward, who ran with Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas before reinventing himself as tattoo artist Phil Sparrow, provides the conceptual undercurrent. Hoseley's main character is an archetype of balanced desire — inviting and withholding simultaneously. The paintings read as lascivious film stills: noir with the lights left on, kink with more shiver.
