Finally, time to write something to start 2012. Sam Falls is a prodigious young American artist, whose work easily weaves between photography, painting, collage and, more recently, sculpture. The work shown here is primarily photographic, at least in the initial stages of the work, but almost all of Falls' prints are worked on in some way after the initial photograph has been taken. Frequently painting on his photographs, Falls builds up layers of hazy, psychedelic colours which blur the depths and details in the images, giving them a hallucinatory feel. These layers also move the final image away from being 'a photograph', and make them multimedia pieces which are invariably unique.
Falls recently relocated to Los Angeles, where David Hockney once lived and produced an iconic body of work, often realised in acid pastels. Think of ' A Bigger Splash' and other works Hockney made on the West Coast in the 60s and 70s, then look at the palette Falls' often uses. In Los Angeles Falls has been making larger abstract works using fabrics which are left to fade and age in the sun, thereby creating epic 'exposure times' which define the finished pieces. Examples can be seen at China Art Objects, on the second page of Falls' work.
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Oranges
Roadside Attraction
Broken And Chopped
Pickin' On Gary Cooper
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Return To The Alps #3
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Ceramics and Smog
Pickin' On Katherine Hepburn
Untitled (Painted Desert #4)
Study Of Drapery
Girls Like Us (Far Away Eyes)
Brother Old News
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Green Tapes
Girls Like Us
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Study For A Portait of Sam Falls by Lucas Blalock
All images © Sam Falls, except final image, © Lucas Blalock
