Boredom Fantasy Mimesis

Boredom Fantasy Mimesis
New work from Sam Dirck
Curated by Kristina Johnson
April 20th, 2020-July 20th, 2020
This show is also in partnership and representation with Approximately Blue.

Waiting Room is pleased to present Sam Dirck’s first solo show Boredom Fantasy Mimesis at our new location in Lowertown Saint Paul. Tempering chance and intention to generate varying expressions of surface texture Sam Dirck positions himself within a set of conditions and moments in an abstract narrative nagivated by his painterly skillset. His work investigates a balance between the reciprocated image and abstraction. Paintings and sculptures serve as improvisational landscapes or implied gestures, delivering the effect that each piece could be a memory you never truly lived. Occasionally a recognizable symbol emerges, making it clear that signs exist within this abstract realm but do not dominate it.

A certain technical prowess is exhibited by Dirck, each piece oozing with a distinctive vocabulary of symbolic expression. While in its production, he bounced between digital and physical means as a nod to his dedicated exploration of the grid. Digitally mapped gestures and handmade marks take on sweeping, continuous linearities in some compositions creating a unique layer-by-layer camoflauge to his methodology; while other works are consumed by his familiar style of hard-edged, dimensional painting.

This show is a collection that pushes to occupy the space between the pictoriality of painting and the spatiality of sculpture; merging the two with elements of abstract design. Dirck’s paintings exude playful interjections, embedded through inherent rhythms of mark, gesture, color and symbol. Each piece is rooted in the familiar but infiltrated by a carnal use of “play,” an utterly interpreted—nonprescriptive—element to the work.

June 2020: Critic’s Pick via Artforum

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