Margot Samel is pleased to announce The Beloved Color. The Hateful Color., a solo exhibition by Stephen Polatch. (b. 1990, London, UK). The title of the artist’s second solo exhibition with Margot Samel is pulled from a song cycle of Franz Schubert’s from 1823, based on 20 poems by Wilhelm Müller, Die schöne Müllerin. In these poems a young traveler pines for a miller’s daughter who favors a suitor dressed in green. An obsession with this color is born from his heartbreak and he is left to anguish in the countryside seeing his loss in the green hills he once loved. Made over the course of the past two years, both in the studio and en plein air, Stephen Polatch’s works playfully grow from the poetic drama. His subjects merge with nature, wander through rivers, court each other among green ribbons of trees and lakes, reflect over sunsets, and enjoy times where both very much and nothing at all happens. The bodies of water threaded throughout the exhibition are made from dappling brushstrokes that mimic the classical piano of this title score and a gentle tension between inside and outside spaces echo the artist’s own mediation between the focus of the studio and the pull of the outside world.

Stephen Polatch (b. 1990, London, UK) lives and works in London, UK. Polatch received his BFA from at The Ruskin School of Art, Oxford, UK in 2013, and went on to study at the Royal Drawing School in London. Recent solo exhibitions include: The Beloved Color. The Hateful Color., Margot Samel, New York,  NY (2024); Swan-Road, Margot Samel, New York, NY (2022), and Clyde, Soft Opening, London, UK (2022). Recent group exhibitions include:The Amber Room: Sticking up for Soft, Cedric Bardawil, London, UK (2024); The Middle Voice, Shtager&Shch, London, UK (2024); In Three Acts, Huxley-Parlour, London, UK (2023); Doing Time, South Parade, London, UK (2023); Pop Girls Run Riot, 105 French Street, Glasgow, UK (2023); Even a cat can look at the queen, Mrs, Maspeth, NY (2022); Viscereal, Althuis Hofland Fine Arts, Amsterdam, NL (2022); To be a giant and keep quiet about it, Yee Society, Hong Kong (2022); To be a giant and keep quiet about it, Margot Samel, New York, NY (2022); Prestwick II, New Glasgow Society East, Glasgow, UK (2022);Peepers, K Halstead, London, UK (2021); A Many Voiced Argument with Life, Glasgow International/Market Gallery, Glasgow, UK (2021); Prestwick, New Glasgow Society East, Glasgow, UK (2021); The Amber Room II, Amber Room, London, UK (2020); Eigenheim, Soft Opening, London, UK (2020); Graven Images, New Glasgow Society, Glasgow, UK (2019); Drawings of Iasi, Iasi, RO (2019); Bilder, New Glasgow Society, Glasgow, UK (2018), and Unswept House, Unit 42, Glasgow, UK (2017).