Samuel Woodman

Self-Replication

February 7th – March 1st, 2025

Self-replication is a series fusing abstract diagrammatic iconography with the aesthetic judgement of watercolor. The series explores a specific longing which emerges from asking; Where did life come from? Why do we need to know? Isn’t it lonely? Drawing inspiration from chaos theory, speculative evolution and religious painting, the pieces walk the line between the known and the sublime, awe and the void. At their root, Samuel Woodman’s works stem from a subconscious perfectionism suggesting an adherence to absolutist principles of scientific study, by combining graphical precision and symbolic colours the works juxtapose the religious and scientific models of life’s origin, contrasting its intended design. Through this lens, the works examine humanity’s search for abiogenesis.

Woodman’s interest is in exploring the relationship between conscious thought and sensory experience. Through their dissonance, the precise linework and amorphous subjects the series alludes to that relationship, between thinking and feeling, between the realisation that the world’s phenomena are so much larger than yourself and the fatality of being at their whim.