SAM FALLS

DATES

August 24 - December 22, 2019

CURATOR

Dana Turkovic, Curator

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Los Angeles-based artist Sam Falls treks into the wilderness, traversing many of America’s national parks and even submerging himself underwater to create compositions on large sheets of canvas that capture the formal qualities of the local plant life. Using only colored pigment and the sun, Falls creates paintings that sublimate the nature world, recording a particular moment in time as well as the human impulse to connect with nature. In his sculpture and ceramic work Falls layers scavenged branches, twigs and leaves to create intricate patterns that constitute a vague definition of “place.”

For Laumeier Sculpture Park, Falls created two on-site large scale paintings documenting the Park’s forest floor by using his distinctive painting techniques with dried pigments, dew drops, rain and mist. Working with Laumeier’s master gardener to grow a customized garden, Falls used the resulting flora on two-monumental sculptures using I-beams and brightly glazed clay tiles. The two hard-edged towers will only represent a sliver of the overwhelming space and abundance of nature.

ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

Sam Falls (b. 1984) was raised in Vermont. He received his BA from Reed College in 2007 and his MFA from ICP-Bard in 2010. He has had solo exhibitions at 303 Gallery, New York, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Trento and Rovereto, Italy; The Kitchen, New York; Ballroom Marfa, Texas; Pomona College Museum of Art; Public Art Fund, New York; and LAXART, Los Angeles, among others. His work has been included in group exhibitions at the Aspen Art Museum, Colorado; Le Consortium, Dijon; Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio; Mead Gallery, University of Warwick, England; Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Menil Collection, Houston; Museo MADRE, Naples; and the International Center of Photography, New York; among others. Falls lives and works in Los Angeles.