Sam Tufnell Returns to Spring/Break Art Show
Beginning today, New York City-based artist Sam Tufnell returns to the Spring/Break Art Show with his new series, aptly titled ‘Self Portrait as a Flat Earther’. This is his third exhibition with the fair in New York City after his successful 2021 video installation ‘Chicken Soup is Not Good for Your Soul’ was exhibited by 5 Myles Gallery Brooklyn and then in Los Angeles with IV Gallery.
This year, Sam Tufnell has created a series of life castings of his own head, which he has then fashioned into miniature nature scenes perfectly fitting for the fair’s Naked Lunch theme. Some of the heads float on pristine blue waters in an aquarium, eerily reminiscent of Damien Hirst’s formaldehyde tanks, whereas others hang on walls similar to hunting trophies. The portraits are both idyllic as well as dystopian and are titled after various historical fictions such as ‘Self Portrait as the Island of California’ (a well-known 16th century cartographic misnomer that explorers persisted the state to be a separate land mass from North America).
In addition to the sculptures themselves, Tufnell has also created a series of digital prints and video works of the art in various digital environments where the portraits float amongst puffy clouds and turquoise waters.
Tufnell sees the self portraits as the ultimate distortion of reality as so much of what we know we assume from other people. If we take a grand view of the human experience; the world has been flat for far longer than it has been round as it’s only been several hundred years since the discovery of science.