Thank You

source: huffingtonpost

Golden creates disorienting sets that incessantly teeter between real and imagined; remembered and hallucinated; past, present and future. Built from Golden’s personal experiences, anxieties and emotions, her works transform from hyper-specific to bizarrely universal. Experiencing her art feels like having a visceral nightmare you’re sure is utterly unique, until you find all the symbols listed ever so neatly in a dream guide.

Golden was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and lived in Minneapolis, San Francisco, Chicago, Austin, Portland and New York, where she received her MFA from Columbia University, all before coming to Los Angeles. “I always wanted to move here,” Golden explained to The Huffington Post. “I had a big fantasy about how beautiful and wonderful it was going to be. I guess I watched a lot of ’70s movies and TV shows — I grew up in the ’70s — and all of it was set in California.”

Although most films and television series were created in L.A., far less actually take place in L.A., leaving the strange impression that the whole city is, in a way, playing pretend. It’s not quite what it claims to be. Mirrors, similarly, are never quite trustworthy in their depictions. As Andrew Berardini wrote in a Golden review: “Objects in mirror are closer than they appear.” When entering a Golden piece you’re immersing yourself in an otherworldly scene of similar logic, a cacophony of discordant times, places and feelings jumbled up, one on top of the other, beginning to melt.

Her installation “Thank You” is an partially mirrored room is painted a painfully pungent aquamarine, with a carpet and couch to match. There are mirrors and screens everywhere, playing the replaying the viewing in real(ish) time. In the center of the space is a clumped mass of thrift store dolls, altered with clay and hair to resemble people Golden knows. To see the flattened faces, viewers need 3D glasses, enacting a reality that exceeds three dimensions. If you stand behind the doll huddle, you can actually see yourself become one of the heads.
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source: interviewmagazine

Samara Golden is a rising star. She has a second solo exhibition upcoming at Night Gallery in Los Angeles; and this past year alone, she’s had a solo booth at Frieze in New York; a two-person, collaborative exhibition with artist and Night Gallery propietor Davida Nemeroff at Various Small Fires; as well as group shows at Rachel Uffner, Marlborough Chelsea, and On Stellar Rays. Though Golden is not originally from L.A., she is picking up where many of the native Los Angeles artists—like Mike Kelley, Chris Burden, and Paul McCarthy—have left off.

Golden’s installations are heavy; they resonate with the past, present, and future. Her distinctive artistic world sucks you in like a clip from pop culture, consumes you like a mesmerizing spell, and spits you out like a ball of fire. Installations might include video collages using photos and self-created mantras, overloads of printed images from Amazon and EBay of desirable products, silver insulation foam from which Golden builds structures, and fabrics dipped in Elmer’s glue to cover the walls. Secondhand furniture, home bedding, sheets, and fabrics adorn the walls and often make up the details, a cacophony of information. It is jarring, leaving audiences at times shaken up—but better off than before, too; more likely to interrogate their own experience. Golden tells stories the way Led Zeppelin, The Doors, and the Eagles did—her soul feels rooted in California, but her experiences feel otherworldly.