“In Case of Sam Spillman” Exhibition

ULTERIOR

[Image: Photograph by Sam Spillman (2022)]

This event has ended.

Ulterior Gallery presents In Case of Sam Spillman, a multi-phased, site-specific installation project at the gallery’s new location at 424 Broadway, #601, New York, NY 10013, opening on April 6. The gallery will host a reception on Wednesday, April 6, from 6 pm to 8 pm.

By accessing and conjuring memories evoked by the texture of a space, the dark places behind things that are visible, the moments when our emotions connect with the very location in which we stand, and those disorienting instances when we no longer know where we are—Sam Spillman transports the viewer to an alternate realm.

Born on Walker Street, Spillman’s earliest connection to NYC began in Tribeca/SoHo, and then shifted to Brooklyn, when his family moved there when he was six. Spillman remembers walking down the streets of Manhattan as a young child—his first recollections of the city being this very area. Spillman reconnects his past memories to his present through a site-specific installation for Ulterior Gallery. This will be the first project at Ulterior’s new, expanded location in SoHo.

By decontextualizing the entire 1,500 square foot space through three different phases, Spillman will deliver a series of encounters with the uncanny. Over the course of four weeks, the space surrounding the installation will shift from a vacant room to a white, clean gallery environment. Through Spillman’s intervention, the room begins to function like a body that continues to change and grow around his installation, which remains intact, as if a deep memory or inner psyche. A mysterious cocoon-like sculptural installation reveals a scene that is both familiar yet disconcerting, and which echoes the shifting metamorphosis of the gallery itself.

The first of the three states opens on April 6 and will be on view through April 16. The second phase will open on April 27 and the final state will be completed and on view from May 4 through 7.

Sam Spillman (b.1977, New York, NY) is a sculptor who lives and works in Chappaqua, NY. Spillman graduated with an MFA from Purchase College, SUNY, in 2018, and also attended an M.Arch program at Cornell University ten years prior to that. With his extensive experience in architecture and building, Spillman develops visual vocabularies that bridge the bodily experience and the essence of space.