Chicago-based artist Boris Osterov is not concerned with creating a pleasant aesthetic effect with his art.

Instead, his “Recent Paintings” exhibit, currently displayed in Gallery 1308 at Union South, is unconventional, uncomfortable, but at the same time underlyingly brilliant.

It manages to accomplish a contradictory trio of sensations by subverting core elements of visual painted art into twisted, grotesque forms.

When most people think of a painting they think of a pleasant assortment of paints tucked neatly inside the frame of a crisp, rectangular canvas.

But Osterov takes the opposite approach. He uses a cake decorator to pile paint, sometimes multiple ones of different colors on top of the protruding edges of rectangular shelves and canvases.

From there his paintings take up real, physical space and have the appearance of organic compounds. It’s good that Wisconsin Union Directorate Art hung a sign forbidding touching the pieces, because the temptation to do so is overwhelming at times.

It’s difficult to describe his works in words, but the effect created is thoroughly bizarre. While most paintings seek to re-create images in someway, representing either material or abstract aspects of life, Osterov’s art almost seems to take on a life of its own in its strange materiality.

Beyond his art’s striking outward appearance, though, there does appear to be serious thought behind the pieces. The idea of turning paint into its own, quasi-organic form is both interesting and subversive.

Compounding this with the idea of the art occurring mainly outside the white rectangles scattered throughout the room, instead of inside, re-emphasizes Osterov’s intent to critique “serious art, serious painters and pretentious aspects of art” with his seemingly haphazard and brutally honest artistic techniques.

Osterov’s art is in essence anti-art. It is not aesthetically pleasing, nor does it evoke abstract thought. Instead it is uncomfortable because its own organic appearance reminds the viewer that in reality, they are nothing but organic compounds as well.

It’s hard to pick out a favorite piece, especially because Osterov stylistically neglects to give his work titles, but two stand out in particular. One is the giant shelf that occupies the center of the exhibit where he displays many different forms and colors of paint. The other is one where the grotesque pile of paint that appears outside the canvas is reflected within the painting with equally distorted paint strokes.

These two paintings perhaps capture best Osterov’s satirical themes, the organic and the grotesque.

The gallery will be on display until March 1.