Samara Golden: The Flat Side of the Knife

Edited by Mia Locks. Foreword by Klaus Biesenbach.
Text by Mia Locks, Samara Golden, Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer

Los Angeles–based artist Samara Golden (born 1973) creates immersive installations that explore what she calls the sixth dimension, where a multitude of pasts, presents and futures exist concurrently. For The Flat Side of the Knife, curated by Mia Locks and organized by MoMA PS1, Golden presented her largest installation to date, filling the double height of MoMA PS1’s Duplex Gallery with staircases, beds, couches, lamps, musical instruments, video and sound. The Flat Side of the Knife combines physical spaces with illusory spaces that appear only in mirrors, akin to psychological and hallucinatory spaces in the mind. Her use of mirrors in conjunction with sculptural elements made from a silvery insulation board allows the illusion of space to expand in multiple directions. This catalog includes documentation of this exhibition alongside the artist’s major works to date.