Ryan Graff Contemporary is excited to launch the first in our Dialogues series: a conversation in images between Abi Joy Samuel and Zachary Oldenkamp. While the stylistic and scale contrasts between the two artists might appear incongruent at first glance, such surface-level differences quickly give way to a deeper, more nuanced exchange. Beneath the visible distinctions lies a shared sensibility: an intense emotional acuity, an awareness of an increasingly complex world, and a mutual effort to navigate it. This vulnerability, present in both artists’ work, forms the connective tissue of the exhibition and gives rise to a deeply felt visual conversation.

Samuel, with her English-Jewish heritage, brings a tenderness sharpened by history. Her work is bold and immediate in technique, and intense in mood. It is deeply physical, often portraying her own body in moments of quiet solitude: lying in bed, submerged in a bath, each position a visceral response to the socio-political weight of the world around her. These gestures, while personal, also speak to a broader inquiry: how the Jewish body exists and is pulled in conflicting directions in contemporary society. Her paintings are raw and unflinching, reflecting an urgent attempt to reckon with emotional and physical presence in uncertain times.

There is a striking immediacy and authenticity to Samuel’s work, a reactive and utterly necessary kind of energy. There’s strong sense of angst and anger, as if conflicting emotions are pulling at the painted figures, which appear almost carved into the surfaces through dynamic, gestural lines. The scale of the work contributes to this intensity, delivering the sense that the driving force behind the paintings needed to be expressed, demands attention, and refuses to be ignored. The work emanates from a deeply personal place, rooted in the artist’s effort to explore personal questions, unfiltered and urgent.