Smithsonian American Art Museum
8th and G Streets, NW
Washington, DC
This retrospective of 150 works surveys the broad-ranging media and themes explored by Samaras, a Greek-born American. The works span sculpture, photography, painting, and assemblage, and in each medium he transforms and alters images to create bizarre combinations of the real and unexpected. The exhibition presents his several approaches to photography, from Polaroid images in which manipulation of the medium distorts the subjects, to his recent panoramas. It also includes examples of his optical dot and disc paintings, outstanding box pieces in which threatening materials—straight pins and razor blades—combine with softer substances in small relinquary-like containers, and more traditionally oriented bronze sculptures.
The exhibiton was organized by the Denver Art Museum.
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