Borna Sammak (b. 1986, Philadelphia) samples from the urban fabric of his surroundings and from the realms of film, TV and YouTube. His installations, videos and wall-pieces embed and encrypt the stuff of daily life. He splits and recombines mundane objects and texts – signs, slogans, clothes or cartoons – into compressed metaphors and dense patterns. Through these, currents of awkwardness, humour and doom run in parallel.
Sammak graduated from New York University in 2011. Solo exhibitions include those at Tanya Leighton, Berlin, 2016; Sadie Coles HQ, London, 2016; American Medium, New York, 2016, and JTT, New York, 2014 and 2016. His work has been included in group exhibitions including OVERPOP, Yuz Museum, Shanghai, 2016 (curated by Jeffrey Deitch and Karen Smith), Transmission Legacies of the Television Age, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia, 2015, and Analogital, Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, Salt Lake City, 2013. The artist lives and works in New York.
Courtesy Sadie Coles HQ

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