Art

A watercolorist, Samit paints predominantly in a Pop Art style with subjects that explore the tension between technology and humanity. Samit’s interplay between familiar comic book imagery and pentrating text takes the viewer on a dystopian journey of the information age. In 2020, Richard Taittinger Gallery presented his inaugural New York solo exhibition, America Disrupted, featuring a series of watercolors painted during the COVID-19 quarantine. A record of the artist’s emotional response to our current era, it is also a time Jay Samit found himself conflicted about his nation’s history. Part therapeutic, part social commentary, Samit’s palette reveals the fissures in American society further exposed by this unsettling period.

“Samit’s painting technique of precisely conveying the aesthetic of last century’s mass- produced comic books lures the viewer into each familiar vignette only to be confronted by biting text that alters the context of the imagery. Each of Samit’s paintings have a poignancy that take us on this journey from past to present, from complacency to abhorrence, with a wink and a nod that will often have you laughing out loud”.  – artist Albrecht Behmel

Samit’s 2022 show Dots & Pixels shined the spotlight on how humans have become the commodities. Our lives reduced to pixels of data sold to the highest bidder millions of times every day. Critics have described his unique art as deeply evocative, sharing an uncanny charm that conspicuously communicates the disruption that defines our time and Hopperesque.