A Backyard Folded Into the Sky. A Dialog with Sam Falls |

– T. S. Eliot 

^[1] T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets (London: Faber and Faber, 1943).

Sam Falls strikes with the rhythm of the seasons, the place leaves, rain, and daylight go away traces which might be each intimate and monumental. His tenth collaboration with Eva Presenhuber in Zurich traces a path of transformation: gestures rooted in reminiscence and expertise stretched outward into dimensions of scale, length, and surroundings. 

In current years, the private and the pure have change into inseparable for Falls. Family silhouettes, ceramics holding recent flowers, and works formed by publicity to wind and solar communicate to life as each fragile and enduring, a rhythm of care that bridges generations. The exhibition invitations viewers to inhabit time otherwise, to really feel the sluggish pulse of seasons and to witness the dialogue between natural varieties and minimal buildings.

Like a backyard folded into the sky, Falls’s observe unfolds outward whereas remaining grounded, a fragile intertwining of artwork, life, and the world that surrounds us.

Michela Ceruti: This exhibition marks your tenth collaboration with Eva Presenhuber. It may very well be a second of reflection. Looking on the works offered right here, do you see the present as a fruits of the concepts you’ve been exploring with the gallery over the previous years? And in what manner does it open up new instructions in your observe? 

Sam Falls: Yes – Eva is a core gallerist who occupies the particular house of actually working with artists; not simply facilitating the productions and exhibitions, however actually encouraging creativity and experimentation. Ultimately, I’ve a conceptual observe involved with time, publicity, surroundings, and illustration, so change is a continuing in my observe. Looking again I can see the work actually shifting via the exhibitions because the exploration progressed and mediums shifted to research these ideas. In an artwork world that finds monetary stability in repetition lately, I’m proud to see the dynamic shifts within the reveals 12 months to 12 months, and really grateful to Eva for giving me the house and assist to alter. 

MC: It seems like your collaboration with Eva and the gallery has been virtually a type of dialogue in itself. How do you stability your individual conceptual course with the assist and framework the gallery gives? 

SF: I feel you see this in quite a lot of artists working with the gallery too. Fischli and Weiss, for example, have all the time been my North Star, and so it’s great to see Eva’s mission not falter via the years of displaying new work of artists with new concepts. For instance, as I’ve grown extra all for working with crops and the surroundings instantly, the work has grown in scale to speak genuinely with nature – so we’ve accomplished Unlimited at Art Basel 4 occasions now, permitting me to make works and exhibit them on a scale too giant for the gallery and lots of museums.

MC: The works within the present weave collectively components of the pure surroundings with elements of the home and the private. From native flora to season adjustments, but additionally symbolic imagery and references to household life. Could you speak a little bit about how this progressive merging of the intimate and the environmental has shifted in your strategy? And additionally what position private expertise performs in your perceive of time and mortality inside the framework of your observe? 

SF: Originally, this technique of working got here from a conceptual agenda to make site-specific works outside – major supply materials representing each house and time – moderately than mediated via a digicam or brush. I initially made works with only one species of plant within the work, like a logo of geography, iconic or native flora to indicate place, equivalent to palm fronds in Los Angeles or ferns in Vermont. The supplies and course of developed from pursuing the idea; via this I put in my “10,000 hours,” as they are saying. The extra I explored this new “medium” or “process,” the extra its potential expanded, equivalent to doing double and triple exposures, working around the globe in several climates, and many others. Parallel to this inventive exploration of the medium inside nature, I grew to become exponentially extra intimate with the surroundings and all for environmentalism. At the identical time, I additionally grew to become a father, so environmentalism grew to become a deeper concern and entangled in my private life, contemplating the state of the world for the longer term generations. This feeling has solely change into extra pronounced over time. 

MC: How did fatherhood particularly shift your sense of time and your strategy to the surroundings inside your artwork?

SF: This is how, in a manner, the surroundings grew to become part of my household, inseparable from the way in which I see the world, and “art as life” actually goes each methods. Creating extra figurative work utilizing my household as silhouettes feels very pure — the identical sense of mortality on a big scale and our intertwined existence. I’ve all the time felt like the private is political and so is the pure world –– it’s each very politicized and personalised, and so is artwork. Part of my aim with the home high quality of among the new works, such because the ceramics with vases on them to carry precise flowers and be modified by the proprietor usually, is to encourage this interplay, in addition to proceed blurring the road between artwork and nature, in addition to artist and viewer. The ceramic paintings comes from my studio, made with crops from my backyard, however the flowers come from the place the work is exhibited and describe the current season, like an summary macro sundial. 

MC: The items offered in Zurich combine pure dyes, withering plant matter, and sculptural components equivalent to beams or ceramic tiles. They additionally use extra overtly symbolic compositions, like that of the Annunciation. Do you assume materials and iconographic decisions invite new layers of interpretation to your work? Or do you see them extra about deepening the experiential high quality of the works themselves? 

SF: I suppose I must say the latter, that it’s within the curiosity of deepening the expertise of the work for the viewer, which I think about myself to be as properly. I don’t make work to have a dialogue with earlier work I made, however moderately it’s spawned out of that have and shifting ahead all the time. Using pure supplies has all the time been within the real curiosity of creating the work extra acquainted and alluring for the viewer, in addition to the method of utilizing solar publicity as a substitute of cameras or darkrooms, or rain as a substitute of printers or projectors. It’s a easy thought, however there’s a lot expertise and manufacturing in artwork that may usually be alienating for the viewer, and whereas it could be spectacular or thrilling at first, I discover it can be condescending and chilly. So the pure supplies provide heat and an invite to go deeper, in addition to the encouragement hopefully to go farther into the work itself by yourself, with your individual reminiscence and notion and references. The symbolic or iconographic imagery got here in via an curiosity in formal language, the way in which I’ve made works constructing off Donald Judd’s aluminum geometry or Jean Prouvé’s prefab beams. But inserting very natural ceramic tiles inside them is to once more work with an current language that’s maybe chilled and to heat it up once more, make it accessible and convey modernism or minimalism right into a recent dialogue with its counterpart of nature. 

MC: You point out iconography being secularized and even co-opted by capitalism. Do you see your symbolic references as a manner of reclaiming them for one thing extra grounded in nature?

SF: I feel iconography has been taken on tour by capitalism to the purpose the place its relationship to faith is its start however the definition is extra secularized. I like the concept of taking it again from consumerism and widespread tradition and circumventing the bags of faith to a spot extra pure: nature, in fact. I’ve a e-book on Sandro Botticelli’s Primavera (1482) that describes the symbolic significance of every plant pictured, which catalyzed an expanded research of symbolism over the ages with crops. This later introduced a full-circle return to school research of the Renaissance, the symbolism in figures and each gesture. This in fact grew to become intertwined with my curiosity in utilizing the household, and all of it got here collectively like this in a manner. 

MC: Your observe matches someplace between portray, pictures, and sculpture, with out being absolutely outlined by any of those classes. I’m very curious to know if this sort of blurring of media has all the time been central to your pondering, or it has change into extra deliberate as your work with pure processes has developed? 

SF: Blurring media has all the time been central to my pondering, however not as a topic a lot as a given — and since artists earlier than my time broke the boundaries down so why fear about it. Actually, inversely, that is what drove me away from pictures and towards pure processes – I went to graduate college for artwork as a result of I had accomplished extra artwork historical past and principle in college and never a lot artwork making – however my curiosity was merging pictures with portray, I suppose additional blurring the strains. It appeared prefer it was beginning to occur within the early 2000s with summary pictures however all the time hitting a wall with the darkroom or printers, and finally grew to become much more medium particular in a manner. So I deserted all of the photographic instruments, from digicam to chemical compounds and darkroom, simply to make use of daylight and time outdoors – the true definition of pictures — on canvas and pigment. So in a manner I went backwards to mix the medium past the place expertise was taking it or may go. 

MC: Over the previous years, your work appears to have grown each in scale and temporal ambition; from giant outside canvases uncovered for days to monumental initiatives spanning whole seasons, like Spring to Fall, offered at Art Basel Unlimited in 2024. I might like to understand how engaged on such prolonged timeframes has influenced your relationship with course of. Does it change how you consider the life cycle of a murals?

SF: Well, I consider it imbues the work with a way of time itself that the viewer can really feel, and expanded time is the perfect time. I used to be all the time a fan of Andrej Tarkovsky and the way in which he did such lengthy takes; there’s quite a lot of preparation but additionally quite a lot of room for probability and surroundings – that is onerous to attain in artwork, and the dimensions itself helps provide extra space for this. There’s a line from a David Berman track that claims, “People got to shift to geological time.” I take into consideration this usually and consider it’s true. The time I spend working outside solely makes me really feel extra in tune with what’s important, and so to mix this with making artwork brings me to a particular place that feels purely inventive and true.

MC: I learn within the press textual content to your exhibition that you’ve all the time admired panorama photographers like Ansel Adams. And critics usually level to traditions like Land Art, cyanotype pictures, and even John Cage’s embrace of probability as helpful parallels to understanding your observe. I wished to ask you, out of your perspective, which cultural, inventive, or philosophical references have been most significant in shaping your observe, and in addition the place do you’re feeling you diverge from these exact same lineages?

SF: Yes, Ansel Adams was a giant inspiration for me, each in his observe of working and residing in nature, in addition to the significant resonance it had in defending nationwide parks and elevating consciousness of the fantastic thing about our landscapes. Robert Smithson was a giant affect, particularly his “site/non-site” works, and his trailblazing in turning outwards to collaborate with landscapes. Fischli and Weiss, as I mentioned, for his or her multimedia strategy and dynamic pursuits, in addition to their underlying philosophical commentary. 

MC: It sounds such as you’re drawn to artists who maintained openness and multiplicity of their observe. What, for you, is the hazard when artwork turns into too narrowly targeted or codified? 

SF: Robert Irwin is an efficient instance of an artist whose early work I actually love — the seek for causes to make artwork via each expertise and philosophy — however then it turns to such a targeted level afterward in each materials and topic that it loses the unique life in a manner. Same for lots of the Light and Space artists – the unconventional and immaterial strategy was so refreshing and thrilling and influential, however afterward it manifested in very material- and production-heavy initiatives. This reification of the avant-garde is one thing so many nice artists have an issue with from my perspective. I suppose it’s not an issue in the event that they shift targets to creating wealth, however that’s why I actually respect somebody like Andy Goldsworthy – although the aesthetics I don’t all the time establish with – his work has remained true to itself/himself – and that justifies my earlier level that point in nature retains you and the work pure.