Dmitry Samarov: Dumpster Fire
@ Firecat Projects
2019 N Damen Ave, Chicago, IL 60647
Opening Friday, July 28th, from 7PM - 10PM
On view through Saturday, September 23rd
Dmitry Samarov : Dumpster Fire
collages 1987-92/2020-23
Opening Reception: Friday July 28, 2023
7-10pm
Blame it on the plague or getting older and accumulating a bunch of crap I didn’t know what to do with, but sometime late into 2020, I started cutting up old drawings, homework assignments, letters, and other ephemera to make pictures.
Restrictions and limits are vital for art and if you remember life in 2020 it was one locked door and electrified fence after another. Since I was a child, my main way of talking to the world was by looking at it and drawing it. Now I was in my house day and night with no one to look at but myself and no scenery but the four walls and whatever was visible out the windows. I’d moved to a ground-level dwelling a month into lockdown which was a blessing in almost every way except offering much of a view. I had to turn inward.
I started by raiding my flat file for failed old art I hadn’t tossed. I cut out or covered up the parts of the compositions that didn’t work or mashed several pieces together to see if they’d generate a spark. Soon there were bins of this and that by my drawing table waiting to go under the knife.
Since starting to write about twenty years ago, I’ve always wanted to fuse the visible with the verbal. All my books are full of pictures but I’ve searched for some way to make the two languages into one. This new (to me) way of jamming bits and pieces of text and images pointed to a possible way to do that.
It still feels like a new thing but I’m feeling my way forward. The pieces in this show represent the tip of an iceberg I’m planning to map for years to come.
– Dmitry Saamarov
Official Website
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Tags: Chicago, Dmitry Samarov, Dmitry Samarov : Dumpster Fire, Firecat Projects, West Town
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