Opening Reception

Saturday, April 5, 6-8pm

There’s a Girl in My Soup presents a group of assemblages and drawings by New York-based artist Sam Anderson. The exhibition deepens her ongoing investigation of formal structures, tying their poetic and psychological implications into meticulously arranged objects and materials.

Central to the exhibition are works organized around triadic structures—a compositional device traditionally linked to narrative resolution. Anderson dismantles these narratives by locking unlikely elements in relationships of mutual dependence and conflict. This approach also reveals the inherent strangeness of exhibition-making, framing the gallery as a kind of ‘black box theater’, where meaning emerges through minimally staged encounters.

Her practice employs ambiguously embodied imagery that draws on cultural memory while resisting tidy interpretation. Here, she leverages the viewer’s familiarity with archetypes and tragic figures, deconstructing narratives through destabilized material gestures.

Sam Anderson (b. 1982 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 Where’s Poppa?, Derosia, NY (2025); 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, Sculpture Center, Queens, NY (2017); The Lonely Bull, Rowhouse Project, Baltimore, MD (2016); and Tally’s Folly, Mother’s Tankstation, Dublin, Ireland (2015). Selected group exhibitions included at 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 Kölnischer Kunstverein 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 Sculpture Center, New York. She recently had her drawings published in the premiere edition (edition zero) of Mutt Magazine (2025).