Different Things Different Days

Press release

“I paint the paintings of all the times and all the thoughts I lack the language to describe… for the single moment I can recall, I feel a dull sadness for the thousands I have forgotten.”

-George Shaw

MEY is pleased to present Different Things Different Days, a solo exhibition of work by artist Samuel Richardson.

Richardson’s paintings probe the evolving relationship between image, object, and environment, asking what it means to navigate a world in which the organic and the artificial are increasingly inseparable. In his work, ‘BOTOX’ overlays a wilting sunflower, ‘Fabulous!’ hovers above a cracked facade, and a painting of the Lidl grocery store logo bears the title God. While humorous, these juxtapositions reflect the increasing difficulty of distinguishing where nature ends and consumption begins. In Richardson’s practice, human intervention is pervasive—not only in the subjects depicted, but also in the very construction of the works themselves.

In Different Things Different Days, Richardson incorporates found objects—rusted bolts, garment labels, matchbooks, USB cords—into his surfaces, blurring the divide between material and image. These elements, already inscribed with histories of use and circulation, destabilize the autonomy of the painted field, implicating each work in a broader network of cultural debris. In this sense, Richardson’s work converses with the legacies of Robert Rauschenberg and traditions of assemblage, while simultaneously reformulating them for a 21st century landscape. Blending together stylized text, bold realism, and spatial ambiguity, his practice engages influences as diverse as Ed Ruscha, George Shaw, and the atmospheric visual language of the Silent Hill video game series.

Unfolding as fragmented narratives, Richardson’s paintings weave together moments of personal fixation, art historical reference, and cultural memory. Archival advertisements and brand iconography from the 1950s through the late 1980s anchor much of the work, highlighting a cultural rhetoric that promised ease amid global unrest. Richardson’s more recent paintings are inspired by the layered textures of Los Angeles—its foliage, graphic signage, urban grit, and echoes of early 2000s pop culture.

Richardson’s dreamlike canvases operate as sites where the familiar is perpetually recomposed. His paintings resist fixed interpretation, instead privileging the viewer’s instinct, memory, and associative response. In their temporal and material complexity, the works in Different Things Different Days reflect the fragmented landscape of contemporary life, shaped as much by media saturation and consumer desire as by memory, dreams, and decay.

Works