Derosia
Artists Exhibitions Publications About
Derosia
Artists Exhibitions Publications About

Kern Samuel

  • Works
  • Exhibitions
  • Biography
  • Press

Kern Samuel 

b. 1990, Mount Hope, Trinidad and Tobago

Lives and works in New Haven, CT

 

 

Kern Samuel’s practice centers on painting as a modality to explore material, labor, and the implications thereof. Such tactile engagements as sewing, quilting, dying, folding, and embroidery generate Samuel’s compositions, which often evoke infographic, diagrammatic modes of dissemination. Language, when included in Samuel’s works, is mediated through the grid of the quilt, subverting a didactic reading and lending the verbal a visual dimension. Text and representation are employed sparingly and in conceptual rhyming with material support, alluding to the everyday applications and intimate associations of a given substrate. Such tactics facilitate open readings, circumventing traditional critical models by privileging visuality and tactility over vocabulary. The generosity and expansiveness of this gesture is underscored by Samuel’s evocative titles referring to memory, the unconscious, and spirituality—the territories in which language is inefficient.

 

 

EDUCATION

 

2020MFA, Yale University School of Art, New Haven, CT
2014BFA, Cooper Union School for the Advancement of Science and Art, New York, NY

 

 

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS

 

2024Between two (a)isles, Derosia at Art Basel, Basel, Switzerland
2023Paining, Derosia, New York, NY
2021What Is Under The Sun?, Bodega (Derosia), New York, NY

 

 

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

 

2025Condo London, hosted by Soft Opening, London, United Kingdom
2024

Naked Name, Derosia, New York, NY

Hard Ground, MoMA PS1, Queens, NY

Five Easy Pieces, Croy Nielsen, Vienna, Austria

States of Becoming, curated by Fitsum Shebeshe, Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, IA

2023States of Becoming, curated by Fitsum Shebeshe, Center for Art, Design, and Visual Culture, UMBC, Baltimore, MD

2022

 

 

 

 

Jahresgaben, Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn, Germany

States of Becoming, curated by Fitsum Shebeshe, The Africa Center, New York, NY

The Practice of Everyday Life, Derosia, New York, NY

Looking Back: The 12th White Columns Annual, Selected by Mary Manning, White Columns, New York, NY

the bunker, Santa Monica Mountains, CA

2019Process and Practice, Gallery Aferro, Newark, NJ

2018

 

Theresa A. Maloney Art Gallery College of Saint Elizabeth, Morristown, NJ

Well Hung, Gallery Aferro, Newark, NJ

2017Caring for Animals ... Benefiting People, curated by Kalena Yiaueki, Jeffrey Stark, New York, NY

 

 

LECTURES AND WORKSHOPS

 

2023Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, MD
2022Black Image Center, Los Angeles, CA
2021Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, MD
2020The Newark Museum, Newark, NJ

 

FELLOWSHIPS AND RESIDENCIES

 

2025Arthur Levitt Jr. ’52 Artist-in-Residence, Williams College, Wiliamstown, MA
2024Denniston Hill, Glen Wild, NY

 

SELECTED PRESS

 

Kern Samuel: Art Basel STATEMENTS, Monopol Magazine, June, 2024 

Kern Samuel: Paining, Louis Block, The Brooklyn Rail, May 2023

Transition Magazine, Indiana University Press, Issue 134, 2023

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