Sam Falls

Donated by Audrey and Martin Gruss, with the support of Sam Falls, Courtesy of Kim Heirston Art Advisory

Born in San Diego in 1984, Sam Falls received his BA from Reed College and his MFA from ICP-Bard.

Heir to the age-old landscape tradition, the artist's inventive language not only engages with the environment, but allows natural phenomena to take control of the entire process. Inspired by the stain techniques, thinned pigments, and Colorfield traditions of such masters as Helen Frankenthaler, Morris Louis, and Kenneth Noland, Falls’ practice consists of placing organic elements and dry pigments on canvases that he then lays out in carefully chosen remote outdoor locations. The materials mask the linens from paint, allowing mist, rain, dew droplets, and sun to bake in silhouettes over the course of time.

Sublimating the natural world in these paintings that both defy and embrace the basic functions of art, Falls’ creations record specific moments in time as well as the infinite human impulse to commune with nature. "We change the work by being present, and the work changes us by being present,” the artist said. “We are breaking down and being built up, just like every moment.” The artist’s paintings thus

occupy a rare space between photography, painting, sculpture and documentary. His practice even recalls Man Ray’s legendary photograms, which were realized by placing objects directly onto the surface of a light-sensitive material which he would then expose to light. Falls’ compositions are similarly entangled with the core precepts of time, representation, and exposure.

Working symbiotically with nature and the elements, Falls' canvases are engrained with a sense of place indexical to the unique environment of their creation while imbued with a universal sense of mortality. With a reverence toward art history, the artist blurs the lines between artistic genres and practices, from modern dance and minimalist painting to conceptual photography and land art, boiling it down to the fundamentals of nature and the transience of life that art best addresses.

Sam Falls has been honored with solo exhibitions at such prominent institutions as the Public Art Fund, New York, the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, Ballroom Marfa, Texas, the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Trento and Rovereto, Italy, to name a select few. His paintings can be found in prominent museum collections including the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, and the Centre Pompidou, Paris.