Not needed
Sugar Coated constructs a world where desire, nostalgia, and excess crystallize into landscapes both seductive and unsettling. Entirely built by hand—piped, poured, sculpted, and assembled—the environments mimic the glossy perfection of digital renderings, exposing the slippage between the real and the simulated. Childhood fantasies bloom into hyperreal terrains already tipping toward collapse.
The immersive installation begins with softness: pink plush carpet underfoot, sweet aromas, pastel clouds, and forests of gumdrops, whipped cream, melted candy, and cereal rubble. At first glance, the scenes shimmer with confectionary innocence. Yet each tableau carries a fault line—a chocolate bunny sinking into sugar-laden ground, lollipop hearts bleeding into syrup, candy forests dissolving under invisible heat. Even the cereal landscape suggests ecological drift, industrial excess, and the sedimentation of consumer culture.
At the center is a large-scale, cyclical video projection in which these crafted worlds begin to breathe, shift, and decay. Free of dialogue, the work unfolds as a hypnotic loop of seduction and dissolution, echoing contemporary cycles of shopping, scrolling, and consumption—small bursts of dopamine that slide from pleasure into exhaustion.
Sugar Coated exposes the hidden cost of manufactured happiness, revealing how desire curdles into saturation and pleasure becomes a trap. The landscapes are lush and inviting, yet always on the verge of collapse—an enchanting fantasy that mirrors the unsustainable rhythms of contemporary life: swipe, scroll, buy, discard, repeat.
Samantha Salzinger is a multidisciplinary artist whose work brings together sculpture, photography, video, and installation through the creation of intricate, handcrafted dioramas. These fantastical yet unsettling landscapes explore themes of overconsumption, artificiality, and loss, encouraging viewers to reflect on their own relationship to the environment and contemporary culture.
Based in South Florida for over three decades, Samantha earned her MFA in Photography from Yale University, where she was awarded the George Sakier Memorial Scholarship, and her BFA from Florida International University, where she received the Joe Bernardo Memorial Scholarship and the Meritorious Visual Arts Award.
A selection of recent exhibitions include: Transitions, (Coral Springs Museum of Art, 2025), Ping Pong Basel (Projectraum M54, Basel, Switzerland, 2025), Photography, It’s About Time (Doral Contemporary Art Museum, Miami, 2025), No Looking Back (Girls’ Club: Francie Bishop Good + David Horvitz Collection, Fort Lauderdale, 2025), Political Circus (FAU Schmidt Center Gallery, Boca Raton, 2024), and Land of the Lost (Diana Lowenstein Gallery, Miami, 2024).
Samantha’s work has been recognized with numerous awards and fellowships, including three South Florida Cultural Consortium Fellowships (2000, 2009, 2018) and the 2025 Artist Innovation Grant from the Broward County Division of Cultural Affairs. Her pieces are represented in both public and private collections, including the Pérez Art Museum Miami, Young at Art Museum, Yale University, the Girls’ Club Collection, and the Mosquera Collection.
In addition to her studio practice, Samantha serves as Professor and Chair of the Art Department at Palm Beach State College, where she continues to foster creative inquiry and community engagement.
