Sammi Mak graduated in 2022. In the three years since, she’s had three solo shows, been included in more than 20 group exhibitions, and has already been acquired by Louis Vuitton. This is not typical.
Mak’s work is rooted in sensation, but finely held. Moving between oil, watercolour, and print, she works with delicacy and control - but the result is not restrained. The surfaces are alive. There’s a softness that holds voltage: a painterly field charged with memory, longing, and feeling just out of reach. Colour blooms without insistence. Space is left open. And what remains - what’s placed - is tuned with exactness.
In their restraint, these works make room for the viewer to feel. The references stretch widely: from the molecular to the mythic, from Japanese landscape painting to Anselm Kiefer’s nature studies. But the presence is unmistakably her own. A quiet almost ceremonial clarity.
This is a rare artist at the very beginning of a serious career.