Stories (Incomplete)

Galerie Gisela Capitain, Köln.

March 05 – April 22, 2005

Galerie Gisela Capitain is pleased to present Sam Samore’s new body of pictures which continue his fascination with cinema and painting: Stories (Incomplete).

Something happens in these long and narrow figurative pictures (70 x 200 cm), but the telling remains elliptical and fragmentary and open to a multitude of interpretations. As in earlier works, the signifiers of desire are put into play. The mise-en-scène and characters float in the dream like state of the viewer’s unconscious. In the filmic unfolding, tracking shots, close-ups, landscapes, reverse angles are collaged together into a semi-understandable visual field. The sequencing is non-linear, and circular. Samore’s palette is muted, and drained of saturation, sometimes suggesting poisonous colors.

To describe a few of the pictures: In #4, 2004, there appear three scenes – but all unfolding discreetly at the same moment? Or are they the fractured time fantasies emerging from the desires of the group of sybarites who simultaneously bite into the same orange? In #54, 2004, this image seems to make corporal the language of Hitchcock’s Vertigo. In that story, it is only through the death of his lover, that Scotty regains control over his phobia. For the first time, in some of the pictures Samore situates the characters in landscapes, so that their actions have a context and perfume an atmosphere. In earlier series such as Allegories of Beauty (Incomplete) and Situtions, the sense of place was minimized in order to bring to the foreground a plethora of character clues.

In #41, 2003 figures on the left lay sprawled on a table in some kind of
stupor – drunken, drugged, dead? Is it the wish fulfillment of a regal seated woman and her standing companion on the right? In #33, 2003 we see two figures apparently floating in a foamy pool of water, situated in a mountaineous forest – are they drowning – as a reference to Ophelia? Are they having a sensuous rapport? Or both?

Sam Samore has exhibited internationally e.g.: Fondation Cartier pour l´art contemporain in Paris (2003), Casino Luxembourg (2000), ICA London (1996), Van Abbemuseum Eindhoven (1996), Kunsthalle Zürich (1994), De Appel Stichting in Amsterdam (1994), Secession Wien (1993), Serpentine Gallery in London (1992), The Köln Show (1990).

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