Dean Sameshima

A landscape was shred
Molly Rose Lieberman

A landscape shredded
Molly Rose Lieberman

Artist’s Relief
Emma Obrietan

Dear Beast
Carole Gibbons

Muses
Carole Gibbons

Galerie Mirages
Group Exhibition

To M.
Miriam Stoney,
Miriam Yammad

Dreams of the everyday
Andrew Cranston,
Winifred Nicholson

Pegasus
Carole Gibbons

Self-Portrait
Miriam Yammad

Not Quite Good Enough to be on TV Harmonies
Joanne Robertson

Haven
Group Exhibition
(White Columns Online)

Free The Innovator
Theo Christy

Personicx
Theo Christy

The September Issue
Bruno Zhu

Andrew Cranston

Carole Gibbons

Dean Sameshima, Still Life (2023).

Dean Sameshima
Portrait of a City

5 June – 25 July, 2026
Opening reception: 4 June, 5–8 pm
Hours: by appointment
5b, 0/1 43 Virginia Street, Glasgow G1 1TS

Dean Sameshima’s first exhibition in Scotland features a group of photographic works drawn from two series by the artist: zu verschenken (2020–23) and Still Life (2023). ‘Portrait of a City’ coincides with the release of a new 256-page publication of the same name which braids together both projects alongside a commissioned text by Berlin-based writer and programmer Lina Martin-Chan. Beyond tracing the genesis of each project and their place within Sameshima’s broader oeuvre, Martin-Chan posits a reading of the two projects as gifts in the Freudian sense – choosing between bodily pleasure and object love, and how we learn about exchange as infants.

Freud says that: “in reality, wherever archaic modes of thought have predominated or persist – in the ancient civilisations, in myths, fairy tales and superstitions, in unconscious thinking, in dreams and in neuroses – money is brought into the most intimate relationship with dirt.” The gift is a symbolic bundle of opposing forces – extending towards and holding onto, dirty and valuable, pleasure and sacrifice. Sameshima illuminates this unconscious connection, embodied as much in the silk scarf and VHS tapes as the used condom: “here, [mommy/daddy], this is for you”.
— excerpt from ‘Givers’ by Lina Martin-Chan

The images in ‘Portrait of a City’ address both public and queer spaces through the lens of the everyday, bridging notions of community, connection, desire and consumption. While studying under Allan Sekula at CalArts in the early ‘90s, Sameshima photographed the exteriors of queer sex clubs and bathhouses around Silverlake, Los Angeles, as well as notorious cruising areas nearby. These images would constitute his first body of work, Wonderland (1995–97), and prove foundational to his practice. Decades later, in Still Life Sameshima documents the waste and intimate detritus left behind in Berlin’s local porn theatres, spaces now too in jeopardy. While the setting and subject matter may differ, zu verschenken nevertheless also concerns the intersection of public and private, and finds Sameshima cruising the quotidian, surveying a civic identity in flux.

With thanks to Soft Opening, London.

Appointments
Works List (PDF)
Publication: Portrait of a City

Dean Sameshima (b. 1971, Torrance, USA) was recently included in the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia (2024), curated by Adriano Pedrosa. Recent exhibitions include Soft Opening (2026, solo); The Bunker Artspace, West Palm Beach (2025); Good or Trash, Paris (2025, solo); Neuer Aachener Kunstverein, Aachen (2025, solo); Getty Museum, Los Angeles (2025); PPOW, New York (2024, solo); Museum of Art of São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand, São Paulo (2024); California Museum of Photography, Riverside (2024); ICA, Los Angeles (2024); Tina Kim Gallery, New York (2023); Queer Thoughts, New York (2023, solo) and Queer Public Space at Museum of Sex, New York (2023). Sameshima’s work is held in the permanent collections of the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Henry Art Gallery, Seattle; The Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, Stanford and Sunpride Foundation, Hong Kong. He was the 2022 recipient of The Artist Acquisition Club Award.

Dean Sameshima
zu verschenken, 2020–23
Archival inkjet print
42 × 59.4 cm

Dean Sameshima
Still Life, 2023
Archival inkjet print
42 × 59.4 cm

Dean Sameshima
Portrait of a City
Section-sewn softcover
129 x 198 mm
256 pages
ISBN 978-1-7394251-9-7

Colophon

5b
Studio 0/1
43 Virginia Street
Glasgow
G1 1TS