NOW SHOWING at sabrosa cafe & gallery

This body of work encompasses a number of iterations on a common theme: how a toxic environment affects the individuals who inhabit it. The image shown is a detail from a mural Schlenker painted on the gallery wall at Sabrosa especially for this exhibition.

1. The first series, originally titled PoliticKing and comprised of 26 small watercolor portraits, was completed during a time while I was living in Washington DC, where so much felt in some way connected to a huge political apparatus built upon gaining and guarding status. This first iteration and series addressed the individual. With the figure as central I imagine the effects that a toxically competitive, hierarchical, and individualistic environment might have on the humans that exist in and interact with it and illustrate the insidious and poisoning effects, distorting and disfiguring their hosts leaving grotesque but captivating caricatures. These individuals felt like villains.

2. In the second iteration of this theme, titled hollowed ground and comprised of three large watercolor and graphite portraits, I found myself drawn again to the distorted figure but also expanded the lens to include the structures and environments that propel, elevate, and prop up these infected creatures. These portraits include and address how once meaningful and even sacred foundations can be exploited for personal gain or carbon copied into parody, hollowing them of any real or perceived morality or authority and transforming them into defiled and crumbing ruins. These creatures felt more like victims.

3. While in an art therapy graduate program I returned again to this body of work completing a third series, titled RATET/TREAT which is comprised of five miniature figurative pieces. This series zooms back in but with a different intention. Addressing these figures as both villain and victim, or more accurately as complex natural creatures that both are effected by and effect their environment, I bring a lens of neither scorn or pity but of curiosity. The frame becomes tighter and more intimate and we search for and wonder what has leeched into our bodies and minds and how does that contamination make itself felt, seen, and lived as we track the feedback loop between person and environment.

ABOUT SAMUEL SCHLENKER

 
Samuel Schlenker is an artist, muralist, and art therapist whose work focuses on various themes related to how individuals and communities react and adapt to unnatural, inhuman environments often using the human figure in distorted, surreal, and symbolic ways. He received bachelor degrees in fine arts and psychology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a master degree in art therapy from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Learn more at www.samuelschlenker.com