Sam Falls
March 13–August 16, 2015
Opening: Friday, March 13, 6–8pm
Exhibition walkthrough with Sam Falls: Saturday, March 14, 1pm
Ballroom Marfa
108 E. San Antonio St.
Marfa, TX 29843
Ballroom Marfa is pleased to present Sam Falls, an exhibition of new work by the artist on view from March 13 to August 16 with an opening reception on Friday, March 13 from 6 to 8pm. Highlighting Falls’s multidisciplinary approach to time and representation, the show will feature new sound, video, sculptural, and wall works.
The transformation of materials and forms through duration and the elements, as opposed to mark-making and mimesis, weaves its way through many of Falls’s pieces. The exhibition will showcase select works created during Falls’s residency in Marfa in July 2014, where the artist engaged directly with materials and forms unique to the Far West Texas landscape.
“A significant element of my work is representing time and place through a merging of sculpture, painting, and photography; this idea was catalyzed in part by my trips to Marfa over the past several years,” says the artist. “I was taken by Donald Judd’s outdoor work Untitled (15 Works in Concrete) at the Chinati Foundation, impressed by how fixed and changeless the works appear compared to the landscape and passing time. As a result I have created several works based off of my love for minimal form but replaced its defiance of nature with an integration of the environment and change. It should prove to be an exciting visual experience to see these pieces in a dynamic relationship to Judd’s works.”
The particular bodies of work in the show subtly but powerfully confront the legacy of Minimalism in Marfa: creating a critical dialogue around sculpture, preservation, landscape, and authorship, that could only happen in the context of Marfa’s singular art historical landscape.
For more information, and to read Falls’s full artist statement, please visit www.ballroommarfa.org.
Sam Falls (b. 1984, San Diego, CA) lives and works in Los Angeles. His work has recently been shown at LAXART (Los Angeles), the Zabludowicz Collection (London), the Pomona College Museum of Art (California), Museo MADRE (Naples), International Center of Photography (New York), and the American Academy in Rome. His work is in the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; LACMA, Los Angeles; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; and the International Center for Photography, New York, among others. He received his BA from Reed College and his MFA from ICP-Bard. He has published more than ten books, including Death Sequence (Karma, 2014), Life Size (Karma, 2012), Studio Space Print Time (Printed Matter, 2013), Light Work (Gottlund Verlag, 2010) and Visible Library (Lay Flat, 2011).
This exhibition has been made possible by the generous support of The Brown Foundation, Inc. Houston; Hannah Hoffman Gallery, Los Angeles; and Ballroom Marfa members.
In-kind support provided by Big Bend Brewery Company, Emily Keeton, and SAVED Wines.
Special thanks to Lauren Burkhart, Vicente Celis, Erin Kimmel, Surber Ade, Sarah Thompson, Dominick Villano and Sam Winks.
