A Gentle Reminder

Opens May 5, – June 9, 2021

Available for sale on Artsy until June 9, 2021

Co-curator: Kimberly Light & M. Charlene Stevens

Available on Artsy

Arcade Project Curatorial is pleased to present a solo online exhibition by Los Angeles-based artist Samantha Fields. 

Curated by Kim Light and M. Charlene Stevens. 

“Within the context of the sublime, visages of epic landscapes help us locate ourselves not just within a specific place, but within all of creation.” – Samantha Fields 

Samantha Fields was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. Her family migrated north from West Virginia in the 1950s to seek work in the steel and automotive industries. Her grandmother, a devout Pentecostal Christian, taught her to read the Bible, focusing on her favorite section, The Book of Revelations. Thus, Fields developed her view of the world through an apocalyptic lens, giving her a taste for horror and a fascination with disaster. These interests informed and developed her metaphorical landscapes. 

The blurred appearance of the paintings is highly detailed – rendered faithfully from the imperfections of the photographic source material. The works share a pictorial language that signifies the foregrounds of the fractional, exposing pixelation that plays within the boundaries of destruction and celebration. The compositions suggest the presence of a cataclysm—a collapsed landscape. The composite images indicate compression of time and space. 

The materiality itself draws from damaged film, poor photographs, broken scans, and found imagery. There is a sense of cycle in the process, as the materials allow for recycling and repurposing. The paintings are laboriously painted and time-consuming — some take years to complete. Samantha Fields paints without the use of projections, grids, or other transfer methods. She works directly onto the canvas with an airbrush; each painting has between 60-300 layers of micron-thin acrylic on a super-smooth surface.

The diptych, A Gentle Reminder, from which the exhibition is titled, juxtaposes two types of horror, the approach of a zombie and a thunderstorm. Both signify a sense of impending and unstoppable doom rendered with serene, seductive beauty. Another Week in the Death of America layers the image of an airplane crashing in flames with joyful, colorful balloons. The images suggest the co-existence of tragedy and celebration – dual narratives read from a singular event.

These unique and self-contained landscapes contract and expand organically. The use of found imagery creates an intricate, chaotic, and complex topography. This sense of nature redeems the idea of the imaginary and disastrous landscape. Thus, the works in A Gentle Reminder suggest a dystopian narrative and hold a mirror to the current turmoil regarding our own personal and political landscapes.

*In this exhibition, the curators have chosen not to include dates with the image descriptions. The images should not be assigned to a specific time and place or interpreted as a critique of any current event.