Sam Falls

Sam Falls spends his artistic working time in nature. He creates paintings and sculptures that are characterized by prolonged processes of creation and by natural elements. He places flowers, branches or stones on canvases and creates representations of nature with the influence of wind, light, earth and colour pigments, often with reference to art history. His practice is committed to radical slowness and surrender. Nature is both a place of work and a place of refuge for the artist. In doing so, he does not seek the romanticism of nature, but a hopeful, personal space for agency, not least in the face of the climate crisis.

Healing and the harmonious interaction with nature are at the center of the Healing Pavilion. The sculpture offers two seats facing each other, inviting visitors to engage in intimate conversation with other people or alone in meditation and tranquility. The seats and supports that make up the work are filled with terrazzo made of precious stones instead of traditional materials such as marble, shells or glass. Each support contains specific stones with healing properties that work on their own or in combination with the others. Terrazzo has been used as a floor covering for buildings since antiquity, and here it has an effect both on the immediate environment - for example, with "unconditional love, even for stones underneath" - and on the visitors who touch it and sit in the sculpture. In this way, Sam Falls speaks of the coexistence of man and nature.

Untitled (Healing Pavilion: calm and balance, peaceful sleep, soothes frayed nerves, endo- crine system healing, mental organization, stress relief, patience, helps kidney function and fatigue, writer's block and truthfulness, overcoming fear, and unconditional love, respectively to stones below), 2015, Gemstone terrazzo, steel; Courtesy the artist and Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Vienna/Zurich