Menu
The New Contemporary Art Magazine

Samantha Wall Explores Race in “Let Your Eyes Adjust to the Dark”

Korean born artist Samantha Wall's black and white works explore the complexities of race, particularly her own multi-raciality’ between living in Korea and now the United States. First featured on our blog, Wall primarily works in graphite and charcoal to create detailed and conceptual drawings. For her upcoming exhibit at Roq la Rue gallery in Seattle, "Let Your Eyes Adjust to the Dark", Wall created new works using sumi ink and dried pigments to achieve a haunting style of expressionism.

Korean born artist Samantha Wall’s black and white works explore the complexities of race, particularly her own multi-raciality’ between living in Korea and now the United States. First featured on our blog, Wall primarily works in graphite and charcoal to create detailed and conceptual drawings. For her upcoming exhibit at Roq la Rue gallery in Seattle, “Let Your Eyes Adjust to the Dark”, Wall created new works using sumi ink and dried pigments to achieve a haunting style of expressionism. Her subjects’ figures are reduced to ghostly silhouettes and ink blot-like impressions, where the only detail is in their eyes and facial expressions. Dappled by the ink medium, they are neither black nor white but a complicated combination of both. In an effort to better understand her subjects, Wall interviewed and then photographed the multiracial women that are portrayed in her drawings. She approached her 2013 “Indivisible” series in similar fashion, where Wall made photographs and video stills during extensive interviews with her subjects. The result is more than a conventional portrait; they are “a place where emotions call out and perceived racial boundaries dissolve,” Wall says.

“Let Your Eyes Adjust to the Dark” by Samantha Wall opens at Roa la Rue gallery on October 1st, and will be on view through October 31st, 2015.

Meta
Share
Facebook
Reddit
Pinterest
Email
Related Articles
In the work of Lucas Lasnier, also known as PARBO, geometric forms collide with and infiltrate our reality. Whether adorning a wall or a page, Lasnier’s penchants for both the abstract and the realistic are at play. And Lasnier’s background in urban art comes through even in his more commercial ventures.
Interpretations of Lyon based Eric Lacombe's mixed media works and paintings have been varied and extreme: monstrous, melancholy, horrific, and even beautiful. Describing his art as "caricatures of the soul", the self-taught artist's images exaggerate and distort his characters' faces into haunting portrayals. Their faces look almost like masks, some painted without mouths or eyes, or given bird-like beaks, and yet their transfiguration is the most revealing thing about them. Each is a sort of reflection of the artist's own feelings, who likens his subjects' appearance to a deconstruction of their torment.
Felicia Chiao, a self-described “industrial designer by day and illustrator by night,” crafts drawings of humorous and fantastical scenes, packed with vibrant details. Her signature bald, naked protagonist seems to be a stand-in for all of us, taking in the wonder or other range of emotions in each piece.
Swedish artist Mikael Takacs creates mesmerizing paintings that he then distorts with marble effects. His subjects are people that he has met in his own life, warped into his own interpretations using the abstract expression of marbling. "I find that the half abstract nature of my portraits makes it both easier and harder to connect with them. It's harder in the sense that you can't really see who it is, or maybe even what it is. It may be easier to connect with them for basically the same reason, as you can project so much of your own thoughts onto someone you can just barely see."

Subscribe to the Hi-Fructose Mailing List