Artist Statement – Sam Wohl
I come to art through drawing daily, obsessively, and with purpose. It’s a creative habit and spiritual practice, a way of processing the world and intervening in it. My work blends social realism with imagination, combining technical rigor with exaggeration, absurdity, and layered symbolism. I’m drawn to contradictions between beauty and violence, labor and leisure, revolution and routine and I use visual storytelling to explore them.
I grew up in a working-class, arts-oriented household where movies took the place of religion. As a teenager politicized by punk, hip hop, and the failures of American mythology, I looked for meaning in imaginary worlds when I couldn’t find it in the real one. That sensibility still drives my practice today: a commitment to radical imagination grounded in real-world struggles.
I use whatever medium best fits the story or moment be that murals, drawings, films, or public interventions. My goal is not just to reflect reality but to disrupt it, to suggest new ways of seeing, feeling, and organizing. Whether I’m creating public work, narrative images, or ephemeral gestures, I aim to provoke, to amuse, and to inspire. I believe in the poetic and political power of images and their ability to connect lived experience with collective memory, and to turn the everyday into a site of inquiry, resistance, and possibility.
CONTACT
SAM WOHL—CV
EDUCATION
2019 MFA Visual Art, University of California Dan Diego
2007 BFA Painting, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY
AWARDS-GRANTS-RESIDENCIES
2025 Landmarks of Art Residency, Borrego Springs, Ca
2022 40K$ KFC Giving Award
2018 PAM Theatre Residency, Los Angeles, Ca.
2017 25k$ CRES Award Recipient. UCSD
2017 2.5K$ Russell Grant Recipient. UCSD
2017 Best Editing and Special Effects, Art Power. UCSD
2009 Conflux City Residency, NYC
2004 Academic Scholarship, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY
EXHIBITIONS - SCREENINGS
2025 Tryst Art Fair, Landmarks of Art Residency Booth, Torrance, Ca
Mural, PaperLeaf Press, Los Angeles, Ca
2024 Provocamé, Charlie James Gallery, Los Angeles
Otherwise Film Festival, San Diego, Ca
2023 Coaxial Arts, Empathic Flavors screening, Los Angeles, Ca
Last Group Show, Bread and Salt, San Diego
Vantage Point, Group Show, Kruglak Gallery, Oceanside, Ca
Mural, 3B Collective, Hilda Solis Care First Center, Los Angeles.
2022 SD Faculty Exhibition, California Center for the Arts, Escondido, CA
Manos. TameCine Film Festival. Tamésis, Antioquia, Colombia.
William D. Cannon Gallery. Carlsbad, Ca.
Unlocked Art Faculty Exhibit. Kruglak Gallery. Oceanside, Ca
2021 3B Collective: Highways and Byways, Residency Art, Inglewood, Ca
2020 Glimpses of Life, Video Exhibition, Kruglak Gallery, Oceanside, Ca
Manos and Roadside Cosmos, Screening, Floodplain Gallery, St. Louis, MO
Manos and Lacustre, Screening, Echo Park Film Center, La, Ca
2019 Defect Traces, Solo Show, 3235 1/2 Gallery, Los Angeles, Ca
Manos, Screening and Q&A, Cine Tonalá, Tijuana, Mexico
Manos, Thesis Film Exhibition, UCSD
Judas Unicorn: Artifacts, VAF Performance Space, UCSD
Eccentricity Has Room, Artists from UCSD MFA, MCASD, San Diego
2018 Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Juried Exhibition
We Stole The Fire, Group Show, Melrose, Los Angeles, Ca
LAVA, Group Show, UCSD
2017 Tragic Fantasy, UCSD
2016 To Be or Not Be: Aesthetics in the Age of Extinction(s), UCSD
2014 Hippy Kama Sutra, Book Release, ThinkTank Gallery, Los Angeles, Ca
Not Free, Not Dead: The Psychedelic End, State of the Art. Berlin, Germany
2013 Jelly Souls/Mindglow, ThinkTank Gallery, Los Angeles, CA - Screening
2012 MInglow Premiere, Roxy Theatre, San Francisco - Screening
2009 Nuclear Squirrel Tour, Conflux City, New York, NY - Performance
2008 Automutilation Exhibition, 1.0, Solo Exhibition, Bay Area 51 Art Space, SF
Inception, SCA Contemporary,(Albuquerque, NM - Exhibition
Art Olympics, Bay Art 51 Art Space San Francisco, CA - Performance
Automutilation Exhibition 2.0, Fort Gallery, Oakland, CA
SELECTED ARTIST LECTURES
2022 TameCine Film Festival. Tamésis, Antioquia, Colombia.
2019 Photography as Social Practice, Professor Brian Cross, UCSD
2019 Guest Lecturer: Artist Talk, Studio Art: Drawing, Professor. Ruben Ortiz, UCSD
2019 Judas Unicorn Performance Lecture 2.0, UCSD
2018 Judas Unicorn Performance Lecture 1.0, Artist Talk, PAM, Los Angeles, Ca
2017 Art Department of Wendy Lecture, UCSD, Ca
2014 Special Effects of Beasts of the Southern Wild, Borsht Corp, Miami
ARTICLES/PRINT
Aliendigena, Guillermo Estrada, 2021
Eccentricity Has Room, MCASD Exhibition book. 2019
Cinefex. Pourroy, Janine. “Making of Beasts of the Southern Wild”, January 2013
Art Practical. McCrystal, Carol-Anne, “The Slacker, the Protestor, Cosmic Gestation, and Me”, December 7, 2011
Alibi, Leigh, David, “Markings”, Inception at SCA Contemporary, 2009
FILM /THEATRE
2023 Empathic Flavors, Documentary, Director.
2020 Something Other Than Its Own Mass, Documentary. Editor.
Roadside Cosmos: A Film About Uranium Club. Director
2019 Judas Unicorn Performance Lecture, UCSD
2018 Manos, Documentary. Director
Judas Unicorn. @ PAM performance space, LA CA
Judas Unicorn: The Staged Reading, Writer/Director, UCSD
2017 Wendy. Feature. Storyboard Artist.
Tragic Fantasy. Director.
2016 Where No Man. iFeature. Storyboard Artist.
October Eighth. Short. Director.
2015 Swiss Army Man. Feature. Art Department.
2014 Snitches. Short. Director.
Cabal. Short. Production Designer.
Dwarves of Demrel, Production Designer.
2013 Mediterranea. Feature. Lead Construction.
2012 Jelly Souls. Short. Director
2010 Mindglow. Short. Director.
2011 Beasts of the Southern Wild. Feature. Lead Artist.
2008 Next Level H.I.M.. Short. Assistant Director.
TEACHING
MiraCosta College 2021- Present
UCSD 2020-2021.
