Sam Porritt: One Thing After Another (Drawings 2005–2025)

The Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen is pleased to present the first institutional solo exhibition in Switzerland by the artist Sam Porritt (b. 1979 in London, lives in Zurich). Porritt’s practice unfolds predominantly through the medium of drawing but also encompasses sculpture and spatial installations. Entitled One Thing After Another (Drawings 2005–2025), the exhibition provides the first comprehensive overview of Porrit's drawing practice over the past twenty years—ranging from spontaneous ink drawings to complex sheets worked intensively with wax crayon. 

“What are we doing here? And why should we care?” Sam Porritt’s work is characterised by an interest in both conceptual and social questions, which he explores through the act of drawing. At its core lies a finely tuned sensitivity to the paradoxes of human existence. In his daily drawing practice, Porritt processes everyday observations, anecdotes or headlines that capture his attention. Yet for him, drawing is far more than a mere depiction of reality. In seeking an immediate connection between hand, eye and mind, it becomes a field for experimentation, a link between the individual and their environment, an embodiment of pure information. Spontaneity and speed, but also repetition, play a decisive role here: intention meets coincidence, every attempt a collaboration with chance.

In One Thing After Another (Drawings 2005–2025), Porritt makes the ongoing development of these creative processes visible. Drawing by drawing, he takes us through twenty years of intensive work, revealing diverse and sometimes unexpected connections along the way. Beyond its retrospective approach, the exhibition itself functions as a spatial installation. With the simple yet fundamental gesture of a line running through the entire exhibition space, Porritt brings selected individual works into deliberate dialogue with the broader cosmos of different series and creative phases—from early experiments and black-and-white character heads to colourfully vibrating patterns.

It is the most elementary means of drawing itself—line, colour, form—that become the main protagonists of Porritt’s artistic investigations. Yet he repeatedly destabilises these elements, allowing something new to emerge: from an abstract tangle of marks, a face suddenly crystallises; a looping line turns into wire mesh; a title adds an unexpected layer of meaning to a motif. In a playful and often humorous manner, Porritt demonstrates how minimal cues and reduced gestures can convey broader contexts—and how meaning ultimately takes shape in the eye of the beholder.

Sam Porritt (b. 1979 in London) lives and works in Zurich. He studied sculpture at the Chelsea School of Art before completing his postgraduate degree at the Royal Academy Schools, London in 2005. Solo exhibitions (selection): Plan for the Worst, Hope for the Best (with Francesco Cagnin), Last Tango, Zurich (2024); Autoimmune, Lokal-Int, Biel (2023); Out of Place, Paradise Works, Manchester (2019). Group exhibitions and performances (selection): Patterns and Order, Villa Bernasconi, Geneva (2022); Works on Paper from the Collection/RESET, Museum Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich (2021); Annemarie von Matt – widerstehlich, Nidwaldner Museum, Stans & Centre culturel Suisse, Paris (2020); Tallinn Print Triennial, The Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia, Tallinn (2018).

The Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen is supported by Stadt St.Gallen, Kulturförderung Kanton St.Gallen, Swisslos, Susanne und Martin Knechtli-Kradolfer-Stiftung and Kulturförderung Appenzell Ausserrhoden. The educational programme is made possible by Raiffeisen.

For further questions please contact Giovanni Carmine (carmine@k9000.ch) or Valentina Ehnimb (ehnimb@k9000.ch).