With a new site-specific installation, Sam Samiee creates a space where visual culture and poetry come together.
Le gymnasium sacre is the translation philosopher Henry Corbin gave to the Persian Zur-Khaneh, the classical form of Iranian gymnastics and the small building where the exercises take place. Visual artist Sam Samiee adopts the term to express the moment when visual art and poetry come together. Corbin made it possible to see the world as a Zur-Khaneh, literally a House of Strength, where existing traditions are safely preserved. Samiee uses the term for the space he creates, where the many traditions of visual art and poetry converge, both in the exhibition space and in the landscape that the words intend to indicate.
About Sam Samiee
Sam Samiee creates installations with paintings and spatial, painted objects. For him, painting does not stop at the edge of the canvas; he explores the boundaries of traditional painting. In this way, he examines how an artist can depict the three-dimensional world.
With the exhibition Le gymnasium sacre, Sam Samiee creates a space where visual culture and poetry come together. The titles of the works, sometimes short poems, are clearly part of the works themselves and cannot exist separately. The words give direction to the imagery, and the paintings, in turn, are a way to shape thoughts and ideas. The landscapes, myths, poems, and images that make up the work are thus housed and bound together under the title Le gymnasium sacre.
At Concordia, Sam creates a new site-specific installation. With paintings, ‘Dutch mountains’, and upside-down fish placed along a walking path. Walking along the path, the works are viewed from different angles, as it should always be; there is not one perspective but multiple viewpoints, especially with a work of art.
Sam Samiee studied at AKI and now teaches there. Last October, he won the Wolvecamp Prize, and in 2016 he received the Royal Prize for Free Painting.
The opening of this exhibition was on Saturday, April 13, 2019, from 3:30 PM.
The artist talk with Sam Samiee took place on Sunday, June 2, 2019, at 3:30 PM during Cultural Sunday, featuring a Middle Eastern program.