#86: Sam/Sal
We're joined by multidisciplinary artist & illustrator, (Sam/Sal), who tells us more about Les Rallizes Dénudés, Wong Kar-wai's love trilogy, the Hellboy creator, Mike Mignola, and much more!
(Sam/Sal) is a multidisciplinary artist working in photography, graphic design, and illustration. They try to make art that is visually striking work that is either driven by play where I approach art as a way to have fun and express ideas in random entertaining ways while other times art is just an expression of their immediate feelings, a lingering influence of their Dadaist obsession. They aim to create raunchy and abrasive art that revels in the grotesque. Their ultimate goal with life and by extension their art is to represent South Africa from the good, the bad, every mundane detail in between.
We welcome Sam/Sal to The FRM Newsletter to share what they’ve been into recently!
🎧🥁 MUSIC
Music remains a constant inspiration throughout my life. Most of my ideas start as erratic, incongruent, visuals prompted by music. The idea is forever married to the song that birthed it. I enjoy everything from pop to straight up noise but my two true obsessions of the past 5 years have been undeniably Les Rallizes Dénudés and the Drain Gang (GTB, SG) collective. Bladee and Ecco2k in particular have taught me about myself and given me alternate and more esoteric ways to view art, the world, and where I fit in between that. Shanti Cullis’ Primate is one of my favourite pieces of art to come out of South Africa that revels in his coloured heritage over a dark brooding instrumental.
🎨 ART
The Hellboy creator, Mike Mignola, had a strong impact on my early style and taste when I felt like I was first truly gaining consciousness as a creative being. His jagged, deformed, and moody gothic style still dictates most of what I'm attracted to right now. Bringing it back to S.A. though, Gabriel Stephen inspires me constantly through his depictions of South African Landscapes occupied by twisted, demonic figures. A quick shoutout to Hideo Kojima as well. In my opinion, his convoluted, nonsensical but always gripping narratives and visual games make for some of the best narrative and artistic experiences.
🎬🇯🇵 FILM
Cinema has been with me through every part of my life, from rewatching Pixar movies as a kid till i could recite the films verbatim to watching classic trilogies like The Matrix and The Lord of the Rings and now when I look to cinema to remind me why I create. Auteurs like David Lynch (R.I.P) and Wong Kar Wai have shaped my tastes, thinking and approach to art creation. David Lynch’s Wild at Heart is an engrossing film despite its unpredictable tonal shifts, giving you both manic highs, disturbing lows, and everything in between. Wong Kar-wai love trilogy is an intense collection of 3 loosely connected films that tell a narrative of yearning and love constantly out of reach. The Taiwanese new wave and the slow cinema within the movement also go unbelievably hard. A Brighter Summer Day is a classic from that period of cinema and I highly recommend that everyone try to sit down and watch it to completion at least once.
I haven't read an entire book in far too long but a novel I think about constantly is Kazuo Ishiguro’s ‘Remains of the Day’. It illustrates the life of an emotionally distant person who served the will and of another man his entire life, never allowing himself to act on his own life. Ishiguro used the archetype of a butler serving an aristocrat as conceit to great effect.
🤳 PHOTOGRAPHY
My love for film bleeds naturally into my love for photography. There's a long list of inspiration and people I learn from in the art world. Ulysses Aoki’s surreal and abstract use of colour and shape in his street photography makes his images look like fun but sometimes eerie dreams while in South Africa, a graffiti artist/photographer's work that I've been intrigued with for years has to be Cathy Xiao. Their street photography and documentation of graffiti in empty or almost empty scenes tell a story of the people who’ve been there and I think there's something really cool in capturing this type of ‘negative space’.