We’re The Heirs To The Glimmering World
Jonah Samson
Opening: Friday May 5th from 6 to 9pm
Exhibition: 5 May to 3 June, 2017
A Feature Exhibition of the Scotiabank Contact Festival of Photography
After fleeing the violence of Europe in 1944, André Breton came to the Gaspé Peninsula in Québec and wrote the book Arcanum 17, which used the crumbling beauty of nearby Percé Rock as a metaphor for the indestructibility of life. In light of humankind’s looming efforts to annihilate itself, his book proclaimed the superiority of women, arguing that only feminine ideals would bring peace to the planet, and that ultimately only love and art would allow humanity to flourish. In We’re the Heirs to the Glimmering World, Jonah Samson contemplates the lamentations and vitality of femininity by transforming a series of found photographs and negatives he purchased from eBay, including a series of press images of women crying, and symbolic photographs displayed in both their negative and positive forms. With current world tensions and the rampant surge of misogyny in recent American politics, a call for the rise of the feminine as a path to harmony may be as strong now as it was then.
Jonah Samson is a self-taught artist who has exhibited nationally and internationally. His exhibition Another Happy Day (2013) at Presentation House, Vancouver was listed as one of the top 10 shows that season by Canadian Art magazine. The book that accompanied Another Happy Day was listed as one of the top releases at the New York Art Book Fair by The New Yorker. A second publication with Presentation House, “Yes, Yes We’re Magicians” was released this month, and has already been awarded one of the top book design awards in Canada. Copies of both will be available at the gallery. Other exhibitions include “Every Exit is an Entrance Somewhere Else” at Macaulay Fine Art, Vancouver (2016); the Musée Eugène Leroy, France (2012); “Otherworldly” at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York (2011) and “Unearthed” at Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts in the U.K. (2010) among several others. Samson lives on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia.
CR wishes to thank Sarah Macaulay for her gracious assistance with this exhibition.
