About David Samuel Stern
David Samuel Stern was born in 1982 in Highland Park, a suburban city in Lake County (IL, USA). He got an MFA at the Washington University in 2006 and now lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
As a child, he didn’t think about art much until taking a darkroom-photography course during a high-school summer break. From that moment on, thanks to that summer course and once learned the medium, David began to take art seriously.
Work
His latest work, Woven Portraits 2020, is the result of photographic prints on translucent vellum. David physically cut and weaved together by hand two portraits of the same person. He then merges them into one another to create an exciting pattern and incredible texture. Finally, carefully cuts them apart. The attempt he aims at by doing this is to give portraits a sort of abstraction to allow the subjects to hide within themselves. He indeed states on his website: “In hiding something we reveal others.” Also, to David, the process of making something is as necessary as the thing itself.
Technique
Each piece of the Woven Portrait series is a physically unique and one-of-a-kind portrait. The photographs, all taken in a lighting studio and printed on vellum, are all large-scale prints.
The palette of light and the delicate contrasts maximize the effect of overlapping two sides of a human being. By doing this, David generates two different emotions. The portraits are caught in one mid-motion, a mix of two attempts of an action.
David transforms the photographic prints by creating a painterly atmosphere. His method is simple yet powerful. However, the abstraction of his work hides elements and details of the portraits as well.
David features in several creative international magazines and has already exhibited both in various solo and group shows.
Discover more about David Samuel Stern here.