For the inaugural project at Cookie Factory, marking its launch, Sam Falls exceptionally brings the surrounding nature he experienced and worked with upstream, inside the exhibition space. Specially cooked up for Denver, this exceptional project consists in the artist’s exploration of the surrounding landscape of the Rocky Mountains, and the subsequent recording of the land’s cycles, language, intrinsic properties. Boldly bringing this imposing, wild nature back inside, the American artist invites the visitor to penetrate into a new, reconstructed vertical forest, matching the size of Cookie Factory’s walls. Nothing Without Nature brings together for the first time all his vocabulary - paintings, photography, ceramic sculptures, drawings, that were all made specifically around the region of Denver for this occasion, and a re-activated, live video installation. 

Nomadic in his practice, the American artist works outdoors, with the immensity of nature as his studio. For his project at Cookie Factory, Sam Falls worked in the vastness of Colorado’s region, famous for its diversity, ranging from mountains, canyons, grass-covered plains, to arid deserts. He worked especially in the Yampa River Valley, the continental divide looking over the majestic Gore Range. By focusing on that area, literally in the path of the famed pony express - the iconic fast mail delivery service in the United States, operating from 1860 to 1861 - he counts a specific American story, and speaks to a crucial chapter in the countries’ history. Like an homage to the Wild West and the Native Americans who have protected this particular land, he goes back to the roots, the soul of that region, and its complex history. Deeply anchored in the place of their creation, his canvases and sculptural work are like geographical documents, markers of a specific place.

Known for integrating nature in his creative process, Sam Falls sprinkles pigment around plant life that he exposes to atmospheric moisture, sunshine and rain. Nature is Sam Fall’s laboratory that dictates the final result of his works, a studio with no walls. Akin to a kiln for ceramists, his method means never knowing in advance, always embracing the unpredictable forces of the environment. It’s about admitting risk, accepting that things might not work out. The artist operates a reversal: it's no longer us looking at nature, but nature looking at us; no longer humanity taming nature, but nature taming humanity. Nature’s process is respected, an osmosis with space and meteorological time created. Sam Falls’ canvases tell the story of acceptance. No longer is the artist the central actor in the narrative, nature takes center stage, its voice the one heard. Completely forgotten by the post-industrial world, Mother Nature is somehow restored its rightful place.

Just like he does with his paintings, Sam Falls removes himself from the process and lets nature run its course in his film installation Sunset / Sunrise. Broadcast in real-time, this video piece spans cities across continents, showing the rising and setting of the sun. In a world where the very rhythm of life has shifted, the pace exponentially quickened, while the modern world has developed a fear of the dark. In an act of poetical resistance, Sam Falls brings us back to the most primal, natural understanding of time, of a life punctuated by these two culminating moments of day - its end and its beginning.  

Sam Falls’ works are tinged with a special kind of melancholy, one that resides in finding oneself, of seeking one’s own place in the world. In this quest, Sam Falls tries to reinstate nature in its rightful place, initiating a conversation all humanity must have with the earth in today’s world. Facing Sam Falls’ works, no longer can one pretend to be masters of nature. Nature decides, speaks and demands being listened to. His vertical forest is also a nod to the interior forests that inhabit all of us, the ones that humankind has to remember to look after, to grow and preserve. Both external and internal, these forests have no boundaries, no limits. Unlike humanity that has kept setting borders, defining repeated frontiers over the course of its existence, the forest is just like the sky above our heads that unites us all. It is the quintessential image of unconfined movement, nature unbound, our common ground, and freedom.