Kern Samuel
Have Mercy On Me (Green) (2022)
“Substrata of mixed media (rust, pigment, dye, and soil) transform pieces of stitched canvas, denim, or linen painted or stained with mutant blocks of dispersed color, undulating circles, and crescent moons. Suffused with the material richness of Delaunay and Orphism, these misshapen odes to painterly form are more than loose geometric abstractions; they are delicate filigrees of color and repetition endowed with the metrical rhythm of verse poetry”.
(from the exhibition text for Five Easy Pieces at Croy Nielsen, Vienna, written by Max Henry)
photography: kunst-dokumentation.com, courtesy of Croy Nielsen
Ophelia (2022)
Kern Samuel Biography
Kern Samuel’s (b. 1990, Mount Hope, Trinidad and Tobago) practice centers on painting as a modality to explore material, labor, and the implications thereof. Such tactile engagements as sewing, quilting, dying, folding, and embroidery generate Samuel’s compositions, which often evoke infographic, diagrammatic modes of dissemination. Language, when included in Samuel’s works, is mediated through the grid of the quilt, subverting a didactic reading and lending the verbal a visual dimension. Text and representation are employed sparingly and in conceptual rhyming with material support, alluding to the everyday applications and intimate associations of a given substrate. Such tactics facilitate open readings, circumventing traditional critical models by privileging visuality and tactility over vocabulary. The generosity and expansiveness of this gesture is underscored by Samuel’s evocative titles referring to memory, the unconscious, and spirituality—the territories in which language is inefficient.
Recent group shows include Hard Ground at MoMA PS1 (New York, 2024), Five Easy Pieces at Croy Nielsen (Vienna, 2024), States of Becoming curated by Fitsum Shebeshe at Des Moines Art Center in Des Moines, Center for Art, Design, and Visual Culture at UMBC, Baltimore and The Africa Center in New York (2022, 2023, 2024), Jahresgaben at Bonner Kunstverein (Bonn, Germany, 2022) and The Practice of Everyday Life, Derosia (New York, 2022), among others. Selected solo shows: Paining at Derosia (New York, 2023) and What is under the sun? at Derosia (formerly known as Bodega, New York, 2021).