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© Samantha Rosenwald

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Samantha Rosenwald

Los Angeles

Artist Statement

Being a frizzy-haired, comically chubby chicken nugget born and raised into the glossy, chill-centric culture of Los Angeles has not only infiltrated my identity politics and spurred my fixation with female beauty expectations, but it has also urged me to lean into my sense of humor as a mode of social survival. Comedy, strangeness, anxiety, and unnecessary overachievement define my work and my identity. If life is a sisyphean quest for cultivated L.A. chillness, then the inevitable and cyclical downhill tumble is lonely, dissociative, and self-flagellating.

Formally, my work harnesses these neurotic and comic tendencies. The use of colored pencils, a small unsophisticated material associated with childhood, not only points to the dissonance between highbrow and lowbrow in my thinking and practice, but it also echoes the labor of the obsessive overachiever. That anal girl, in her relentless perfectionism, appears to be fun, or at least socially compliant, but within her obsessive attempts at greatness, there is an innate glitch: a sinister disobedience or a rippling strangeness that, in itself, is radically unsettling.

© Samantha Rosenwald

Samantha Rosenwald's Portfolio

Samantha Rosenwald, Beep the Ladybug Messing Everything Up, 2019, colored pencil on canvas, 60x62
Samantha Rosenwald, Get a Grip, 2018, colored pencil on canvas, 39x58
Samantha Rosenwald, Ghent Bent, 2018, colored pencil on canvas, 36x36
Samantha Rosenwald, Lemme Splash, 2018, colored pencil on canvas, 36x36
Samantha Rosenwald, Lotion, 2016, original Canon XA20 footage, found images/music, original audio recording
Samantha Rosenwald, OMG Deceased, 2018, colored pencil and acrylic paint on gallery wall, 114x96
Samantha Rosenwald, Party of One, 2018, colored pencil on canvas, 50x62
Samantha Rosenwald, Touch, 2016, original Canon XA20 footage, original audio recording
Samantha Rosenwald, Wêt Galante, 2018, colored pencil on canvas, colored pencil and glaze on ceramic, fabric, wood, canvas: 48x60
Samantha Rosenwald, I'm Dying Up Here, 2018, colored pencil on canvas, colored pencil and glaze on ceramic, party store pedestal, fabric, live/dying tulips, canvas: 54x72

© Samantha Rosenwald

Artist Biography

Samantha Rosenwald (b. 1994, Los Angeles) received her BA in Art History from Vassar College in 2016 and her MFA in Fine Art from California College of the Arts in 2018. Rosenwald has shown with galleries such as Good Mother Gallery, CULT Exhibitions, and PS8, and has been featured in magazines such as VoyageLA, New American Paintings, and Art Maze Mag. She is currently a part-time art and general education instructor at Brentwood Lower School in Los Angeles, where she lives and works.

samanthajrosenwald.com

@samanth_jr

© Samantha Rosenwald

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