Sam Birchman: The Other Three Points: New Oil Paintings



"Fitting Demise For A Humiliating Transgression", Sam Birchman, Exhibiting In "The Other Three Points..." At Form/Space Atelier December 13- January 4, 2014.
 

     In June, 2007, Form/Space Atelier transitioned from a corporate-sponsored art gallery to an all-volunteer operated exhibit space and artist residency atelier.  Sam Birchman, an artist exhibiting June 2007, was asked if he would be interested in being the first artist exhibited under the new operating principles of Form/Space Atelier.  Birchman agreed. 

     Casting memory back to that time, the exhibition Sam Birchman was showing in at 1907 2nd Avenue had been cut short; the corporate sponsor, Intracorp, a global real-estate development megacorporation had just delivered the notice to Paul Kuniholm Pauper that the sponsorship had ended, and the gallery had to moved in ten days.  Generous though Intracorp's sponsorship was, the crisis of where to relocate Form/Space Atelier in the most compressed of deadlines presented Paul Kuniholm Pauper with a test of his networking skills on a scale not weathered before or since.  Paul Kuniholm Pauper had just participated in a fundraiser in Belltown, screening his video which would become his selection to the Tenth Northwest Biennial, projected in a space little-used.  Paul Kuniholm Pauper approached the property manager of the under utilized space and hammered out an eleventh-hour agreement which established the new home of Form/Space Atelier, moving the gallery from 1907 2nd Avenue to the current location at 2407 1st Avenue.  Paul Kunihom Pauper, working several all-nighters for 12 straight days, built out what was once a leopard-skin print carpeted, red- and black box in a stairwell, into a skillfully deconstructed mainstream gallery space in the tenderloin of Belltown.

     Since Sam Birchman's first show in June 2007, his work has been shown at least once a year for the last six years, and has also been curated for Angle Gallery in the Tashiro Kaplan Building, where Paul Kuniholm Pauper was curator 2008-2009.

     The Other Three Points: New Oil Paintings is the latest solo exhibition from Sam Birchman at Form/Space Atelier, large-scale oil paintings dealing with a variety of glimpses into the subconscious and Id aspects of human nature, where human nature meets a disturbing but ironic neuroscience.  Sam Birchman studied painting at Evergreen State College.