Albert Maria Samreth
Select Acts from The Peach Blossom Fan
December 12–28, 2025
In yesteryear reality was a play
Now the play is just like reality
From the sidelines I watch a second time
Heaven preserves a man with cold eyes
當年真是戲，今日戲如真。
我再次从场边观看 上天眷顾眼神冷峻的人
The Peach Blossom Fan (1699) Kong Shangren
The 17th century Chinese play The Peach Blossom Fan by Kong Shangren recognizes history as a problem. I don't think anyone reading this would be unfamiliar with the theme of the work: artists and politicians who over-invested in their careers by prioritizing their own self-preservation, inadvertently causing the collapse of their world, what we today call the Ming dynasty.
Personally, I’ve been working to overcome my own fears of such a trap, and so I’ve begun by looking at you straight on whenever I can, as part of my new policy of making more eye contact. The thing is, intimacy is not a purely private or intrinsic affective state, nor is its expression solely spontaneous. Intimacy is a world-making. That term feels so 2015 doesn’t it? Worlding. It's a flippant form of despotism to claim something is enclosed within a specific temporality like the year 2015, a way of naming it insincere, naive, determinate. I’ll contend we were somehow more innocent then. The singer may be innocent but never the song. I feel compelled to remind you, Lauren Berlant wrote that intimacy always is a co-production.
Maybe this all constitutes that dynamic we were talking about the other night. When we were supposed to go home but didn’t. This actively constructed, and continuously negotiated social phenomenon of being together in this town, or even on this planet. I’m talking about all of us – whether we like it or not. I think we have to or, well, maybe… I’ve not been innocent for a while now and when he yell-sings we'll crucify the insincere tonight, tonight, as the meme goes, I really felt that. The lyrics crawling along like a Chiron provided new insights. I never really knew the words until that evening. I was not referring to an actual chyron, which I avoid whenever possible. More aporia. Though I still can’t figure out for the life of me how you aren’t as fucked up by all of this as I am. But maybe I’m missing something? So here I am, choosing to be simple. I admit it.
I didn’t think it would turn out this way.
Albert Samreth, The Storyteller (2025). Pine needles, polyester, plastic, wire, paint, and metallic thread. 9.5 x 31 x 1 inches.
One more thing, because I hesitated and missed my chance to tell you so I’ll say it now. About how your comment hung over me the next morning, the diagnosis of the way kids are putting themselves together now. Time is never time at all. The music they listen to, the food they eat, the clothes they wear, every aspect of their lives, and even ours, has increasingly become a kind of karaoke. Believe in me as I believe in you.
Albert Maria Samreth is an artist based in New York City and Phnom Penh, Cambodia. He was born in 1987 in Los Angeles to Cambodian parents. Samreth works in sculpture, installation, painting, and moving image. Samreth studied at the California Institute of the Arts, received his MFA from Columbia University, and is an alumna of the Whitney Independent Study Program. His work has been exhibited internationally, including projects with SA SA BASSAC in Phnom Penh and exhibitions supported by Arts Initiative Tokyo and the Asian Cultural Council.
Brief Histories presents Select Acts from The Peach Blossom Fan by Albert Maria Samreth from December 12–28, 2025. This is the artist’s first solo exhibition in New York City.