Kern Samuel (b. Trinidad and Tobago, West Indies, 1990) is an artist based in New Haven. In this limited edition of coconut fiber doormats (designed for Maiden Name), Samuel expands his drawing practice to the floor, offering a work of art to mark the threshold of the home with a pattern evocative of other boundaries and passages.
In his broader practice, Samuel's often elliptical work develops a poetics of the everyday, incorporating food products in a recent series of sculptural paintings; snatches of the plainsong of contemporary American English in earlier quilted wall hangings. It has been said that poetry offers an opportunity to listen in on a conversation between the poet and her or himelf; Samuel's work has this hermetic quality, making its disclosures all the more precious. He does this with work that marries the rigor and austerity of a certain conceptualism with a profound sensitivity for, and appreciation of, material in all its sensuousness.
18" x 30"
