M+B presents Sam Falls and Photography Sculpture Figure

13 Sep M+B presents Sam Falls and Photography Sculpture Figure

Posted at 18:10h in 2012 by art weekend LA

Sam Falls

Open Friday and Saturday through art weekend LA.

Show Runs Through: September 15th – October 27th, 2012

M+B is pleased to announce an exhibition of new work by Sam Falls including painted pictures and sculpture.

I can’t imagine that what matters most in art at the moment is just one thing, because everything is pretty erratic and thinly spread. I guess there’s always social potential, economic investment, and then hopefully idealistic aesthetic development, which may be the closest thing to cultural value. So these are the elements I take into consideration when I’m working, when I decided to study art, to become an artist, and then to invest my entire life in art. Of these issues my tendency as an artist has been toward the aesthetic and material, but conceptually framed by time and representation. Photography has proven to offer a well of artistic issues worth investigating and attempting to resolve. Painting isn’t so much the dead horse it’s being treated as, but one in a coma that must be woken up, rather than carried forward in a vegetative state. Sculpture is steady in its aesthetic exploration, but my interest is in catalyzing more material exploration engaged with photography and technical development while remaining in dialogue with its past. What’s interesting to me now is the task of seamlessly integrating photography into the artistic cannon, while simultaneously rejuvenating and inspiring painting and sculpture via a direct relationship with them.

My images investigate photography’s potential as an art form while expanding on its capacity for representation. A continuation of my painted pictures that negate the single, isolated past moment and involve three stages of production: the photographic, the digital and the physical. With the fruit and tire works in this show, I am photographing an object, using the inherent colors of the backdrop to dictate the Photoshop work as well as the brush strokes, and implementing the object itself to paint on its own image. The question this raises, beyond a medium’s ability to represent an object or idea, is a question of perception itself and how we relate today to photography and painting. What is a more honest representation of a pear? A photograph where the pear is three times larger than real life and flattened out to two dimensions? Or an actual imprint made from the fruit itself with paint where positive and negative space outlines the cross section of the fruit? When I look at these pieces, that question actually holds ground and is hard to answer—I’m used to seeing any image of anything at any size, but rarely do I see a rubbing or direct print of something on paper or canvas. That said, the painted prints all hold a high veracity, feel more “true” in a way in terms of representation, and make me feel somewhat distrustful of the photographic. It points out a sense of instinctual distrust I believe humans have for mass production—the uncanny valley.

The aluminum sculpture is powder coated with two different composites of pigment. Each piece is fully covered in a UV protected pigment, and then the inside is re-coated with a non-UV protected pigment. So, though each respective panel appears to be the same color on either side now, the sides facing inwards will all fade in the sun. The form that each sculpture takes dictates the shadows that fall on the inside of the sculpture and the gradient of sunlight is revealed over time, burned into the sculpture like a photograph. Though the image is seemingly abstract, it is the shape of the sculpture itself that is represented. The goal of these sculptures is to be permanently installed outdoors so not only do they become a representation of their form, but also the specific path of sunlight for the site in which they are ultimately installed. In contrast to most outdoor sculpture intended to defy the burden of time, these sculptures grow symbiotically with time and age, just as we do. Eventually the inside pigment will fully fade away and the coat of exterior pigment underneath that has been hidden will slowly begin to appear reversing the process—the most exposed parts will become saturated again and the composition will inverse until the sculpture is returned to its original all-over composition—you know, like birth and death.

– Sam Falls, 2012

Sam Falls (b. 1984, San Diego) received his BA from Reed College in 2007 and MFA from ICP-Bard in 2010. Falls is the 2010 recipient of the Tierney Fellowship, and his work has been exhibited in the US and abroad, including a solo exhibitions at Fotografiska (Stockholm), American Contemporary (NY), Printed Matter Inc. (NY), West Street Gallery (NY), Luce Gallery (Torino, Italy), to name just a few. He currently has four monographs published of his work: Val Verde (2011), Paint Paper Palms (2011), Visible Library (2011) and Color Dying Light (2009). Four more monographs are due in the upcoming year. Falls was listed as one of Modern Painters’ “100 Artists to Watch,” chosen for ARTFORUM’s “Best of 2011 – Critics’ Pick” and named as one of the “Top 30 Under 30” for Forbes by Jeffrey Deitch. Falls currently lives and works in Los Angeles. This is Sam Falls second solo exhibition at M+B.

Photography Sculpture Figure
Daphne Fitzpatrick, Sara Greenberger Rafferty, K8 Hardy, Mariah Robertson and Sara VanDerBeek

M+B is pleased to announce PHOTOGRAPHY SCULPTURE FIGURE, a group exhibition curated by Matthew Dipple, with artists Daphne Fitzpatrick, K8 Hardy, Sara Greenberger Rafferty, Mariah Robertson and Sara VanDerBeek. The exhibition will be on view from September 15 through October 27, 2012, with an opening reception for the artists on Saturday, September 15 from 6 to 8 pm.

Photography composes space in two and three dimensions. Sculpture exists within space and defines volume. Within these volumes and dimensions the figure exists dangling, dancing, laughing, living, hidden, exposed . . . somehow it all connects. Not like mathematics. Photography, sculpture and the figure are companions that know each other intimately. They can live without each other, but get on so well when they are together: they co-exist in space, sharing rhythms, textures and thoughts.

The exhibition Photography Sculpture Figure brings together five New York artists all working in photography and (frequently, occasionally or abstractly) in sculpture. These five artists also, but not always, address the figure in their work. The pieces in the exhibition explore photography, sculpture and the figure—and the unavoidable physicality that results—in differing combinations of movement, the body, identity and performance.

Daphne Fitzpatrick was born in 1964 in Long Island, New York and lives and works in New York City. Her work has been exhibited at the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, TX; The Center on Contemporary Art, Seattle, WA; ICA, Philadelphia, PA; LACE, Los Angeles; Sikkema Jenkins Co, NYC; Participant, NYC; Art in General, NYC; Colgate University, Hamilton, NY; Jack Hanley, San Francisco. Fitzpatrick has contributed work to the publications ARTFORUM, North Drive Press and Interview Magazine, and she has received grants from Art Matters and The Jerome Foundation.

K8 Hardy was born in 1977 in Fort Worth, Texas and lives and works in New York City. She has had solo exhibitions at Balice Hertling, Paris; Galerie Sonja Junkers, Munich, Germany; and Reena Spaulings, NYC; and her work was included in the 2012 Whitney Biennale at the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY and the 2010 Greater New York exhibition at MoMA/PS1. She has performed at the Tate Modern, London; Artists Space, New York; The Serpentine Gallery, London; and the Transmodern Age Festival of Experimental Performance, Baltimore, Maryland. Hardy is represented in New York by Reena Spaulings and in Paris by Balice Hertling.

Sara Greenberger Rafferty was born in 1978 and lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She has exhibited solo projects at The Kitchen, NY; MoMA PS1, NY; Eli Marsh Gallery at Amherst College, MA; and The Suburban, IL. She has participated in many group shows at venues such as the Aspen Art Museum, CO; Neuberger Museum of Art, NY; Gagosian Gallery, NY; Public Art Fund at the Metrotech Center, NY; and the Jewish Museum, NY. Her work is included in the collections of the MoMA and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Greenberger Rafferty received her MFA from Columbia University in 2005 is represented by Rachel Uffner Gallery in New York.

Mariah Robertson was born in Indiana in 1975, though grew up in California and now lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She has exhibited widely including recent solo institutional shows at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, UK and Grand Arts, Kansas City, Missouri, as well as exhibitions at MoMA/PS1, NY; the Silver Eye Center for Photography, Pittsburg and recent inclusion in Out of Focus at the Saatchi Gallery, London. Her work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, NY and Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA and is featured in an ongoing documentary for Art21 titled New York Close Up. Robertson is represented by American Contemporary in New York.

Sara VanDerBeek was born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1976 and currently lives and works in New York City. She has had solo shows at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Metro Pictures, New York; Altman Siegel Gallery, San Francisco; Whitney Museum of American Art; and The Approach, London. Her work has been exhibited at many international institutions including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angles; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; Guggenheim, New York and Bilbao; Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington D.C., all of which have included her work in their permanent collections. VanDerBeek is represented by Metro Pictures in New York and The Approach in London.