Samantha Nye: Attractive People Doing Attractive Things in Attractive Places

Candice Madey is pleased to present Attractive People Doing Attractive Things in Attractive Places, Samantha Nye’s first solo exhibition in New York City. Working across painting, video, and installation, Nye has dedicated the last decade to creating compelling dialogues between queer identity, mid-century references, and camp sensibilities.

Nye’s video and installation practice, recently the subject of a solo presentation at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, reconsiders Scopitone films from the 1960s and 1970s, the precursors to today’s music videos. In her remakes of these predominantly white and heteronormative short films, Nye centers queer sexuality and intergenerational kinship by casting her mother, as well as women and nonbinary people of her mother and grandmother’s generations, to star alongside the artist. These themes are also highlighted in Nye’s painting practice, a medium to which the artist has maintained a longstanding commitment.

The seven oil paintings on view at Candice Madey are part of an ongoing series (2018–present) that takes Slim Aarons’ popular poolside photographs of the 1970s as its starting point. Known for his depictions of wealthy celebrities and socialites lounging in luxury, Aarons once described his work as “attractive people doing attractive things in attractive places.” Struck by this rhythmic utterance, Nye began to challenge the photographer’s heteronormative understanding of attraction and its equation to privilege. While drawn to Aarons’ aesthetics of abundance, she rejects the power structures embedded in the photographs’ content. Stripping Aarons’ pool sides of their original occupants, Nye instead re-populates them with lesbian queer elders—cisgender, non-binary, and trans—engaging in sexual play and leisurely kink.

Representing aging female and non-binary bodies, a subject long omitted from visual culture, as both sexy and sexual, Nye tackles the often-overlooked problematics of ageism that still dominate our society today. The artist’s interest in elders originates from her own Florida upbringing immersed in her mother and grandmother’s circle of friends and their romantic pursuits. Nye recalls helping her grandmother pick out lingerie in advance of a date and becoming acutely aware that there is no age bracket on sexual desire and satisfaction.

Nye’s work further suggests the parallels between ageism, homophobia, and misogyny, and generates a dialogue between different forms of marginalization. She proposes a utopian alternative—lush landscapes and celebratory scenes that offer inclusive spaces for pleasure.

About Samantha Nye
Samantha Nye lives and works in Philadelphia. Her recent solo exhibition, My Heart’s In A Whirl, at The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2021) was written about in The Boston Globe, BOMB Magazine, The Brooklyn Rail and was included in the Boston Art Review’s “Best of 2021.” She is presently included in The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston’s exhibition New Light: Encounters and Connections. Her work is in the collections of the Tufts University Permanent Art Collection, and The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Nye has an MFA in painting from Columbia University, New York (2018), and a BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Tufts University, Boston (2010).