Details:

This work depicts a pair of rolled and discarded socks lying on a wood-grained floor. From an aerial perspective, the viewer can see two squished and distorted renderings of the infamous smiling figure from Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa."
Framed: 17.5 x 13.5 x 1.2 in.
Signed

① Artwork:

Mona Lisa Socks

This work depicts a pair of rolled and discarded socks lying on a wood-grained floor. From an aerial perspective, the viewer can see two squished and distorted renderings of the infamous smiling figure from Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa. This composition exemplifies the artist’s approach to art-making. The work is simultaneously a mundane scene featuring a pair of rumpled socks on the ground, and an exploration of the commercialization of images printed on consumer items—through a reference to one of the world’s most recognizable pieces of art.

Samantha Roth’s drawings are at once familiar, strange and highly detailed. The artist's works seduce the viewer with diaphanous layers of carefully applied colored pencil over a darkly painted ground. The artist’s meticulously rendered scenes frequently depict interior spaces, bodies in motion and mundane tasks. However, these recognizable spaces, figures and events are depicted in such a way as to make the ordinary seem unusual. For Roth, the impulse to mine daily experience is a way to harness her anxious and observant mind—capturing details and interactions that seem worth turning over again and again.

Specs:

12 inches
15 inches
with frame
13.5 inches
17.5 inches
1.25 inches
17.5 inches

③ Artist:

Samantha Roth

Samantha Roth’s drawings are at once familiar, strange and highly detailed, seducing the viewer with diaphanous layers of carefully applied color pencil over dark painted ground. The artist’s meticulously rendered scenes traverse common ground–an interior space, a body in motion, a small task–but these recognizable events are depicted in such a way as to make the ordinary seem unusual. For Roth, the impulse to mine daily experience is a way to harness her anxious and observant mind, capturing details and interactions that seem worth turning over again and again.

BIO:

Samantha Roth was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1981. The artist received an MFA from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, California, and a BFA from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

A solo exhibition of the artist’s work, Duplex, took place at Tyler Park Presents in Los Angeles, California. The show was selected as a Critics’ Pick Review in Artforum

Group exhibitions that have shown Roth’s work have taken place at: Jancar Jones in Los Angeles, California; Pepin Moore in Los Angeles, California; Luis De Jesus in Los Angeles, California; Human Resources in Los Angeles, California; AWHRHWAR in Los Angeles, California; Harkawik in New York City; and La Loma Projects in Los Angeles, California. 

Roth lives and works in Los Angeles, California.

Samantha Roth:
Mona Lisa Socks, 2021
Paper, black gesso, colored pencils
15.0 × 12.0 inches /
Samantha Roth:
Mona Lisa Socks, 2021
Paper, black gesso, colored pencils
15.0 × 12.0 inches /