Sunday, August 17, 2025

Juxtapoz Journal – Samantha Rosenwald’s “Slapstick” Universe

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Have you ever ever wished one thing so badly your desperation turned humorous? If crying is to snigger, rhyming is to harmonise. In actual fact, a lot of Samantha Rosenwald’s drawings do each: sinister puppeteers and comedic scenes are visible puns that create a world of conflicting needs and reactions. It’s simply as much as us, just like the Greek God Janus, to placed on the tragedy masks of theatre and take part.

The phrase slapstick has completely different signifiers on this present – from commedia dell’arte to excessive vogue, the drawings drenched within the candy-coated sinisterism of this all. Social critique threads by Rosenwald’s world, however the pleasure present in her work are refined reminders that slightly splash of humour goes a good distance. In Tongue and cheek, neon spots cowl the underside half of a face, as a tongue seductively licks to the left; in Butt of the Joke – an ambiguous play on being mocked and ridiculed – a pin-the-tail on the donkey is tacked on a buttock, a bow hanging loosely across the girl’s waist. In Rotten Tomatoes, smashed tomatoes tumble in entrance of theatre curtains (clearly, the evaluation of this play hasn’t gone down properly with its viewers!). If that doesn’t tickle your fancy, Nostril depicts a Disneyland like pink fortress, with an odd upside-down nostril as a nail is thrust into the sky by what seems to be a hand. Did you discover the nostril is respiratory upwards, not downwards? … “actually, breathe within the contemporary air!”

SR portrait

The present is because the title suggests – slapstick. The melding act of child-like drawing and surrealist sensibility are united by the straightforward truth these works are created in pencil. Scribbled in a candy-coloured glamour, Rosenwald performs and subsumes, whereas subjecting the our bodies in her drawings to a candour of fantasy. By turning the physique into an object for consumption, these drawings aren’t about physicality in any respect: as a substitute, by interweaving strangeness and the uncanny, the weird and unrecognisable, the physique turns into a clean canvas. As in Punchline, motifs are positioned upon the physique, together with iterations of panto-esqe verify patterns, the place excessive heels and a birdlike leg and foot all level their toes in direction of a course which might solely be seen as backwards. Topsy-turvy, the wrong way up, in Slapstick the weird and jocular is in every single place. As onlookers, we’re invited to inhale and exhale it, letting it animate the gallery round us.

In Los Angeles, the land of nepo-babies, health-consciousness, and the leisure business, Slapstick doesn’t abide by these social guidelines of striving for face worth success. No. The drawings are makes an attempt at pleasure and lightness, moments of absurdity and elation. The self-deprecating tongue and cheek humour of this exhibition is most compel- ling for its astute, titillating wit. Like every nice get together, the punchline of the snow globe reminds us, “Want you weren’t right here!” —Hatty Nestor

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