Sam Anderson

Sam Anderson’s Where’s Poppa? presents new sculptures that draw on the conceptual and spacial dynamics of black box theater and late 20th-century television, examining how cultural fragments confuse and distort our understanding of the present. The work resists fixed meanings, instead reflecting on the self’s fluid reshaping through memory, archetypes, and the burdens of expectation.

Anderson is a sculptor whose work explores the interplay between desire and the tangible world. By manipulating scale, language, and material—from found objects to handmade elements—she creates oddly familiar yet quietly existential assemblages. Anderson deconstructs narratives that pull from deeply American tropes and the textures of personal history.

Sam Anderson (b. Los Angeles, California) lives and works in New York. She received her MFA in sculpture from Yale in 2010. Selected solo and two-person exhibitions include Lunch Hour, Tanya Leighton, Los Angeles, CA (2022); Sam Anderson, The Gaylord Apartments, Los Angeles, CA (2022); I Never Loved Your Mind, Tanya Leighton, Berlin, Germany (2020); Contemporary Sculpture: Sam Anderson & Michael Dean, Boca Raton Museum of Art, Florida (2019); The Great Assumption, JOAN, Los Angeles, CA (2018); Big Bird, Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne, Germany (2017); The Park, SculptureCenter, Queens, NY (2017); The Lonely Bull, Rowhouse Project, Baltimore, MD (2016); and Tally’s Folly, Mother’s Tankstation, Dublin, Ireland (2015). Selected group exhibitions include The Sammelung Philara, Düsseldorf, Germany (2022); The Aldrich Contemporary Museum of Art, Ridgefield, CT (2017); Bortolami Gallery, New York, NY (2016); MoMA PS1, Queens, NY (2015); Maccarone, New York, NY (2015); and White Columns, New York, NY (2015). Her films have been screened at Kölnische Kunstverein, SVA Theater, and Anthology Film Archives. A monograph of Anderson’s work was published by Mousse on the occasions of her solo exhibitions at Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne and SculptureCenter, New York. She has an upcoming solo exhibition at Art Hall, Baltimore (April 2025).