Samantha Sanchez
My House is a Circus,
an exhibition by Samantha Sanchez (Barquisimeto, Venezuela 1974), is
based on the dazzling acrobatics of an artist’s domestic universe as her
two young daughters appropriate very particular incarnations: a giraffe
and an elephant.
By appealing to efficient graphic resources, the artist provides her unique perceptual take on an iconographical style that was originally inspired by the millenarian circus tradition and that had a grand impact on the surrealists, transforming it into a playful piece inseparable from the likes of an affectionate biography.
The artist, then, resembles a juggler who balances humor and tenderness with a sense of amusement on the stage of a peculiar venue where domestic objects are no different from those of a circus.
In the slightness and freshness of her strokes – that as she herself admits, “let themselves get filled with pink,” like a house where little girls live – lies a fantastic reflection that transgresses the tensions between the nurture versus nature debate, and an expressive power that contains a fragile line that can separate order from chaos among the universe of all affectionate relationships.
Like Chagall, who saw in the circus a constant motive, the sense of love and vital amusement are key in Samantha’s art. Her visual universe is connected to the journeys of a couple – always adorned with long, striped socks – that can emerge to infinity, or simply create a circus within that house that art fills with a crowd of spectators.
By appealing to efficient graphic resources, the artist provides her unique perceptual take on an iconographical style that was originally inspired by the millenarian circus tradition and that had a grand impact on the surrealists, transforming it into a playful piece inseparable from the likes of an affectionate biography.
The artist, then, resembles a juggler who balances humor and tenderness with a sense of amusement on the stage of a peculiar venue where domestic objects are no different from those of a circus.
In the slightness and freshness of her strokes – that as she herself admits, “let themselves get filled with pink,” like a house where little girls live – lies a fantastic reflection that transgresses the tensions between the nurture versus nature debate, and an expressive power that contains a fragile line that can separate order from chaos among the universe of all affectionate relationships.
Like Chagall, who saw in the circus a constant motive, the sense of love and vital amusement are key in Samantha’s art. Her visual universe is connected to the journeys of a couple – always adorned with long, striped socks – that can emerge to infinity, or simply create a circus within that house that art fills with a crowd of spectators.
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My House is a Circus 1
Acrylic on canvas |
My House is a Circus 2
Acrylic on canvas |
My House is a Circus 3
Acrylic on canvas |