Question of Life

At ninety-two, "Life" is no longer an abstraction for Samuel Bak, but instead represents the decades of events, challenges, choices, and outcomes too numerous to catalogue and too random to ascribe predictable control. After years of transposing objects into ideas, Bak uses his mastery of this technique to reexamine the arc of a lifetime, layering over it a retrospective survey of the visual icons he has developed throughout his artistic career. In his incisive essay, Carl M. Herbert explores the many objects and settings of Bak’s work, sharing a lifetime of study of Bak’s rich visual lexicon of symbols, metaphors, and erudite references to provide context for the viewer. He encourages the viewer to bring personal experience to the process of understanding, opening our potential to see the world around us with new eyes.