samxrobbins@gmail.com
@samxrobbins
Statement for Six Easy Pieces at Upper Market Gallery, 2023:
In these paintings-from-drawings-from-life, Robbins illustrates his world with diaristic intimacy. Depictions of his home, his partner, the back of his own hand are rendered in line drawings, giving structure to flat swaths of color. In Sam’s Hand, pastel yellows and purples play against the black and blue of his sleeve. The pink outline of the hand is concise in detail, defining the space without creating clutter. In Leopard Coat Profile, there is a swiftness and spontaneity in the quality of each stroke — the suggestion of an ear, the brushed marking of bristles on canvas. Beauty is borne of this lucid simplicity.
An avid surfer, Robbins paints the sea with immersive familiarity and attunement to luminosity. These works evoke the salty air, and the crisp, chromatic light of California. His awe and admiration of the ocean is eminent in First Person Surfer as the waves wrap around the viewer, or in Homage to the Green Ray as the storied emerald flash appears on the Big Sur skyline. The sparseness of his rendering elicits a physical response that starts subtle and blooms. Each painting is felt in body and in mind.
The show finds its namesake in the 1970 film Five Easy Pieces, in which Jack Nicholson’s character renounces his upper class background to live a humble blue-collar existence as an oil rig worker. This title aptly juxtaposes the inherent physicality and manual labor of painting, against the ease with which we are able to parse each piece. The work is not superficial — far from it — but it forgoes pretension in favor of a clarity and directness that lets the viewer reach the core feeling of the work. Here, visual intricacy is not a correlate of spiritual complexity; rather, meaning arises through humility, simplicity and sparsity.
“Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.” Such is the simple grace of Six Easy Pieces. Robbins’ work is an invitation not to try, not to contend with esoteric references, sentimentality, headiness or haughtiness; an invitation to view these images with ease, to feel, effortlessly and immediately, but deeply. Robbins’ paintings are flashes of transcendence in small everyday moments; artifacts dropped from the eternal present. He gives us a lens through which we may see the world, “without wobbling; unwavering, unapologetically; empty and marvelous.”
Annie Dauber
Bio:
Sam Robbins (b. 1995 Baltimore, MD) is a San Francisco-based artist. Informed by the sun, surf, and fog of his adopted northern California, Robbins makes diaristic work in a variety of media. Representations of his surroundings abound, as do more subtle obsessions: small lucid moments, themes of americana, cars, waves, intimate portraits, qualities of light. He earned a dual BA in Visual Arts and New Media/Digital Design from Fordham University in 2018. Robbins has exhibited work in San Francisco at Upper Market Gallery, Incline Gallery, Mollusk Surf Shop and in New York at the Hayden Hartnett Exhibition Space, Castellain Gallery, Lipani Gallery, and Greenpoint Gallery. In 2016, he was the recipient of the Ildiko Butler Travel Award for Photography.
CV:
Exhibitions
2023: Sky Asunder [solo], Upper Market Gallery, San Francisco, CA
Six Easy Pieces [solo], Upper Market Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2022: Art Fundraiser for Public Defender Mano Raju, Incline Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2021: AE Open Studios, 744 Alabama St, San Francisco, CA
2020: Sanctum Spectra [solo], Mollusk Surf Shop Gallery, San Francisco, CA
These flashes [solo], Castellain Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
2019: Welcome Back, Public Address Gallery/TI Art Studios, Brooklyn, NY
Out from the Darkness, Into the Rainbow, Departure Studios, Long Island City, NY
People’s Choice Salon Show, Greenpoint Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
2018: Full of Life Enough to Explode [solo], Lipani Gallery, New York, NY
2017: Inaugural Opening Reception, Castellain Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
Highlights: Selections from Senior Seminar in Studio Art, Lipani Gallery, New York, NY
Men and Women for Others Visual Arts Exhibition, The Mason Civic League, Hoboken, NJ
Ildiko Butler Travel Award Recipients, Hayden Hartnett Project Space, New York, NY