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It is a cliché to say that reproductions do not do justice to paintings. In the case of Gareth Sampson, however, it is worth reiterating. Not only are the colour reproductions in the exhibition catalogue horribly out, but the surfaces of Samson’s paintings are often flattened by the thin and tinny consistency of offset printing. Let’s hope that the printers do not get this far back in the magazine.
There is something else that concerns me about reproductions of Samson’s work. Much of the work in this exhibition seems to be concerned with controlling the effects of paint, and many of these effects can only really be observed ‘in the flesh’ (for instance, the shifts between gloss and matt paint finishes). Allowing the viewer to neglect these formal characteristics, photographs of the work tend to narrow attention on the ‘Samson set-piece iconographic symbols’1 (the artist’s words, not mine) which they contain.
It is not to say that this iconography is not significant—in this exhibition, genitals and crucifixes, acute teeth-like shards of white, and even a rather cutely Gothic little grim reaper silhouette rendered in purple, all speak to a preoccupation with sex and death. Samson’s bodies resemble a sort of psychic automatism, and like the drawings of Andre Breton, they carefully combine abstraction with bodily referents: hollowed torsos, heads and limbs, all read without too much imagination.
In Jack’s Back (2008), the recurring colour combination of watermelon pink and vivid jade green combines Op Art inspired horizontal stripes. This provides the proscenium arch for a dramatic explosion of killer’s knives, ripping though the canvas like an axe through a door. In Alchemy (2008-2009), the drippy figures with alien-like heads wear