I tried to learn to meditate

After not talking for a few weeks, Sam called me from his temporary studio at the Nalusaca Residency in Sardinia, Italy. Showing me around with spotty reception, the sun was so strong we were both squinting. Paintings lined the floor of the light drenched studio where the doors leading out into the private courtyard, centered by a fig tree, were left wide open. There, more stacks of canvases lay against the exterior stone walls, a small table or two, a few reclining, beach-like chairs, gardening tools, shrubbery and piles of stones peppered the scene. Dividing the outdoor space on one side, Sam’s laundry was hanging on a clothesline stretched between two points of which I couldn't see the ends. When I took note of the linens, transparent in the light, he told their story. Turned out that before leaving New York, Sam dyed a pair of white pants red, only to then wash them for the first time once arriving in Italy. Forgetting the pants had not yet been thoroughly rinsed, they gave a light pink wash over his entire wardrobe abroad.

As the pink tinted garments backdropped our video call, drying in the early afternoon sun alongside his new paintings, I noticed something between them. Not just in pushing pigments from one place to another, but in a connection of errors– errors which make pictures– pictures sustained by a belief in painting– paintings made up of awkward and charming mistakes– mistakes held together by order and fluidity at once, propped up by the willingness to change. I tried to learn to meditate, an exhibition of recent work by Sam Cherof, is made up of paintings which search for a separation from the expectations of doing and being– the unforeseen pinned up, plotted on a line.

words by Al Svoboda