Sam Contis / MATRIX 266

May 3–August 26, 2017

Photographic works made at the remote and idiosyncratic Deep Springs College.

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Sam Contis: Hothouse, 2015; archival pigment print; 16 × 20 in.; courtesy of the artist.

Upcoming
Films
Upcoming
Events
Selected
Objects
Past
Films
Past
Events

Selected Exhibition Objects

Photograph

High Noon

Sam Contis
United States

2014
Archival pigment print
24 x 30 in.
Courtesy of the artist and Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery
Photograph

Hothouse

United States

2015
Archival pigment print
20 x 16 in.
Courtesy of the artist and Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery
Photograph

Arbor

Sam Contis
United States

2013
Archival pigment print
34 x 44 in.
Courtesy of the artist and Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery
Photograph

Cowboy

Sam Contis
United States

2014
Gelatin silver print
24 x 30 in.
Courtesy of the artist and Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery
Photograph

Three Horses

Sam Contis
United States

2015
Gelatin silver print
34 x 44 1/2 in.
Courtesy of the artist and Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery
Photograph

View from Gilbert Pass

Sam Contis
United States

2014
Archival pigment print
5 1/2 x 7 in.
Courtesy of the artist and Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery

Past Events

Saturday, June 10, 1:30 PM
Carol Christ and David Neidorf in Conversation

UC Berkeley’s new chancellor and the president of Deep Springs College come together for a discussion of timely issues in undergraduate education.

BAMPFA
Saturday, May 6, 4 PM
Artist’s Talk and Conversation: Sam Contis

Join the artist for an exhibition walkthrough focusing on her use of photography and archival research to explore the relationship of bodies and landscape. Deep Springs College alumnus Abdramane Diabate joins Contis in conversation.

BAMPFA
Wednesday, May 3, 12:15 PM
Artist’s Talk: Sam Contis

MATRIX artist Contis talks about her photographs and shifting notions of place, identity, and gender in the American West.

BAMPFA

Sam Contis / MATRIX 266

May 3–August 26, 2017

Sam Contis (b. 1982) uses photography and archival research to explore the relationship of bodies and landscape and the shifting nature of gender identity and expression. The body of work in this exhibition was made at Deep Springs College, one of the country’s last all-male institutions of higher learning, located in a remote valley on the California–Nevada border. The Bay Area–based artist’s images call to mind a long history of photography in the intermountain West, from Timothy O’Sullivan and Carleton Watkins to Ansel Adams and Richard Misrach.

Deep Springs College was founded in 1917 by the engineer, industrialist, and educational visionary Lucien Lucius Nunn. Inspired in part by the pedagogical theories of John Dewey, Nunn sought to create a school combining Socratic learning, self-governance, and manual labor as well as almost complete isolation from society. Although practical education was to some degree the underlying premise of the curriculum, Deep Springs is profoundly idiosyncratic, placing its inhabitants in a world very much unlike the reality they will enter upon graduation. The college combines a working cattle ranch and farm, classrooms and coursework, and the opportunity to engage in what is essentially a two-year laboratory of the self: Deep Springs students enjoy a rare freedom to explore nuanced expressions of gender.

Contis’s photographs capture the strange beauty of the high desert in macro- and microscopic views. The indistinguishability of earth and body and the sensual echoes of human and animal give her works an Ovidian sense of imminent metamorphoses. Contributing to this sensation of superabundant possibility is the mythic potency of the American West. For generations, the West has symbolized an ideal of freedom and liberation from society even as it has defined a certain rough and even violent ideal of masculine identity. Coursing through Contis’s photographs is a powerful countercurrent of softness, gentleness, and fertility. Against the backdrop of ageless mountain ranges, the historically constructed categories of gender seem to melt away like a desert mirage.

In addition to creating singular images, Contis is concerned with the syntactic relationships among works in a series. She arranges her works in the gallery in ways that draw out formal echoes and poetic resonances. In this presentation she has included a number of photographs borrowed from the Deep Springs archive, including images made by some of the first students at the college nearly a hundred years ago.

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Download the exhibition brochure (PDF)

Sam Contis / MATRIX 266 is organized by BAMPFA Director and Chief Curator Lawrence Rinder. The MATRIX Program is made possible by a generous endowment gift from Phyllis C. Wattis and the continued support of the BAMPFA Trustees.

Sam Contis / MATRIX 266

May 3–August 26, 2017

Selected Exhibition Objects

Photograph

High Noon

Sam Contis United States

Photograph

Hothouse

United States

Photograph

Arbor

Sam Contis United States

Photograph

Cowboy

Sam Contis United States

Photograph

Three Horses

Sam Contis United States

Photograph

View from Gilbert Pass

Sam Contis United States

Past Events

Carol Christ and David Neidorf in Conversation

Artist’s Talk and Conversation: Sam Contis

Artist’s Talk: Sam Contis

Sam Contis
United States

Sam Contis
United States

Sam Contis
United States

Sam Contis
United States

Sam Contis
United States