It’s Biological: Michelle Samour

October 8 – October 31, 2015

It’s Biological: Michelle Samour

October 8 – October 31, 2015

Thursday, October 15
Gallery talk with the artist at 5:00pm
Reception to follow

It’s Biological: Michelle Samour includes work that explores the relationship between nature and culture broadly, and specifically is driven by her interest in biology and botany. In addition to the works by the artist, visitors can try their hand at exploring the biological world with specimens, slides, microscopes, magnifying devices and books of interest selected by the artist.

At the root of Michelle Samour’s practice is a need to understand and interact with the world through the use of structure, the accumulation of visual language within that structure, and the potential for fluctuation and change between the two. Her use of light and the suggestion of the lens – the physiological eye, a computer monitor, or a microscopic slide – become the means for seeing and examining this information. She says this about her work:

My interest in taxonomy is an extension of a desire to create meaning, and as Baudrillard suggests, an exertion of power. This need for understanding and control manifests itself in my work through the use of the grid as an organizational tool, through the building of structures that preserve and display objects, and through a visual mantra of repetition as a means to accumulate information. My curiosity and inquiry is driven by the vastness of the universe and the limits of reason. To quote Immanuel Kant, “Whereas the beautiful is limited, the sublime is limitless, so that the mind in the presence of the sublime, attempting to imagine what it cannot, has pain in the failure but pleasure in contemplating the immensity of the attempt.”

Michelle Samour is a multi-media artist whose installations, drawings and handmade paperworks explore the intersections between science, technology and the natural world. Samour was an Artist in Residence at the Banff Centre, Canada and at P.R.I.N.T Press in Denton, TX. Her exhibitions include the Fitchburg Art Museum, deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, MA; Museum of Modern Art in Strasbourg, FR; Kohler Art Center, Sheboygan, WI; Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, Houston, TX; Racine Art Museum, WI; and the Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA. She has received grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council (most recently as a 2014 Fellow in Drawing), a Society of Arts and Crafts New England Artist Award, and grants from the Cushman Family Fund and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to study historic papermaking in France and Japan. Samour’s work has been featured in Surface Design, ARTnews, FiberArts and Hand Papermaking magazines, and is included in public and private collections including the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, International Paper Company, and the Meditech Corporation. She is on the faculty of The School of the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA), Boston.

This exhibit is part of Suffolk University Gallery’s annual fall series of exhibits devoted to Art + Science + Design. This season it takes the form of two exhibits.  In addition to Michelle Samour’s solo exhibit; the September exhibition featured the work of sculptor Kim Bernard with It’s Physical: Kim Bernard.

Related programs:

October 15, 2015
Gallery talk: With the artist at 5pm
Reception to follow

Ongoing

Hands-on Activity:
There will be a hands-on ‘lab’ space in the gallery during the run of the exhibit. Visitors will have a chance to examine specimens from the natural world, and explore through drawing, looking at slides, and books related to biology and botany. Microscopes and magnifying devices will be available.