Allison Sommers (she/her) is a Berlin-based American artist working in mixed-media painting and drawing, embroidery, book arts, and installation. Previously hailing from New York City, she has been living and working in Germany since September 2019. Incorporating a lifetime infatuation with the visceral forms of nature and the anxieties of a cold-war era military childhood, her work investigates interiority and self-contained worlds, wounding and perseverance, and what happens in the dark squelchy places when no one is looking.

A self-taught artist, she graduated from the University of Virginia with a Bachelor of Arts in history with a concentration in Early Modern England, and served as the art director of a print weekly before launching her career in fine art. Her work has been exhibited publicly since 2007, including solos at Thinkspace Gallery in Los Angeles and Antler Gallery in Portland, and participation in group shows and art fairs across the United States and Europe. More information can be found at allisonsommers.com.

Statement

One of the unifying themes of my work is a fascination with self-contained worlds—animate flesh corkscrewing around a swarming microbiome, the body as an enclosed habitat, the carefully prepared bunker as both refuge and tomb at the end of days. A necessity for existence in these “post-“ times, a perseverance is shot through these painted worlds—bodies slog on despite wounds, creatures teem in defiance of constant penetration and rupture, viscera splay out of orifices and merrily endure. Pain and wounding are evident but never fatal; the visceral is that of persistent life, not morbidity. Similarly, in installations, the focus remains a contorted sort of resilience, hovering between childish earnestness and ironic despair, collecting the jetsam of the past in a sort of frustrated nostalgia but activating it as a machine of survival prepping, first aid, and persistence. Material is always a dominant inspiration for me, whether it’s the sensuality of graphite on paper or crayon in gesso or the magpie-picking for castoffs used in art books, embroidery, and installation. Cornucopia or canker, I’m absorbed in the world under a lifted log, eager to hide amongst the plentitude of rot against the tumult above.

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