SAMANTHA JOY GROFF
Dark Pastures
Artist Reception: March 4th , 6-8 PM
March 4th - April 1st, 2023
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“I always thought Caravaggio’s “The Taking of Christ” had a film noir quality to it. Judas IDi-ng Jesus while the Roman guards stand ready to arrest him felt like a disciple turned state’s evidence as the son of God took his perp walk. The glint, the shimmer on the soldier’s armor read as divine light minus whatever benevolent association we make with anything adjective-d as “divine.” And the kiss from Judas is akin to a mob guy bestowing upon his former friend the marked man’s farewell.
Since graduating Yale’s MFA program in 2022, Samantha Joy Groff has quickly built a following around her hauntingly seductive portraits of Mennonite women. “Dark Pastures” largely shifts away from this subject matter - the religious garb - while maintaining the intrigue and coyness of her earlier work. Hair coverings be gone. Longing remains.
The thru line here, apart from the setting which still resembles the rural Pennsylvania of her youth, is an unspoken disturbance in the atmosphere, a desperate clutching for connectivity whose intensity at times smothers. And the animals like those in the paintings of Carroll Dunham bear witness to the foibles and yearnings of their human counterparts.
In an essay about the late Paul Thek, historian Robert Storr observes that “the grotesque is the art of extravagant contradiction.” He expands to go into the polarities of refinement versus vulgarity, the decorative versus the distasteful , horror and humor. Groff undeniably taps into these same slipstreams: a potential duality of misreads.”
- Bill Powers
Under the seclusion of night, rural pastures become the site for conjuring divinity. The figures are lit with headlights from a car as if the viewer is catching the figures in a moment unexplainable. Somewhere between exorcism and ecstasy, the subjects intermingle with the pastures of goldenrod behind them and the occasional deer. For this series, I studied modern-day exorcisms as well as the history of mystical Christian experiences. What I am interested in is how rereading accounts of these mystical events never truly captures the embodied experience of those participating. I went to the backwoods and had my subjects recreate my interpretation of such.. The paintings ended up strange in between, is this an abduction, demons releasing or the soul vacating the body? The happening, or encounter moves between affliction and a divine moment in each painting. The play between capturing a spiritual release contends with the earthly bodies painted in a seductive way. There is a hierarchy of figures; one acts as the intercessor and the contorted body is the conduit. The deer bears witness in some, while others fall prey to the figure in orange. The deer possess a feeling of otherworldly sight. Their eyes are oracles as if seeing beyond and yet in nature, they are defects in survival. An overarching theme of my practice is rural female survival, and how the body can withstand, which extends to the animals present. There is a ruggedness to their bodies and desires that is often repulsive to the bourgeois standard of beauty. Broken nails, bruised legs, blemished skin. The location of the paintings suggests privacy is interrupted.The women have not dressed appropriately for the weather and location which calls to question why they are out there. Dark Pastures aims to capture the desperation or lengths some will go to release the things tormenting them, while also showing an erotic play in unwatched spaces.
Samantha Joy Groff (b. 1993, Pennsylvania) received her MFA from Yale School of Art in 2022 and earned a dual undergraduate degree from Parsons School of Design in integrated fashion design and film studies. Recent exhibitions include Samantha Joy Groff: True Riches, Nicodim, Los Angeles; Town Gossip, Martha’s Contemporary, Austin; Stilltsville, Half Gallery, Miami; Vibrant Matters, Jeffrey Deitch Gallery, New York; Noise for Now x Phillips, Phillips Benefit Auction, New York; Eve Presents #2, Eve Liebe Gallery, London; and Hunting Season, Adhesivo Contemporary, Mexico City. She currently lives and works in New Haven, CT.