Samore, Sam (b.1963). "White Dahlia". Series of 6 monochr. photogr. offset prints on stiff paper, each 15,x20,4 cm. (leaf), verso each w. printed artist's name, title ("White Dahlia #1" to "#6") and publisher's address ("Galerie Rodolphe Janssen (...) Brussel (...)"), together in orig. envelope, recto envelope signed "Sam Samore" and "24/200" in black ballpoint and w. printed "Sam Samore/ White Dahlia", verso w. printed publisher's address. - Envelope with sm. tear in upper left corner. = Stills from an erotic movie. ADDED: Idem. "Pink Lips". Col. photogr. offset print on stiff paper, same size etc. as the above, w. printed artist's name, title and publisher's address on verso. Sam Samore’s work has been profoundly influenced and informed by the culture of experimental cinema. The critical insights and practices of André Bazin, Alfred Hitchcock, Andy Warhol and Chris Marker, among many others, have become the very starting point for his adventure of narrative deconstruc- tion. In the meantime, classical mythology, fables and modern experimental novels, from Homer to Alain Robbe-Grillet via James Joyce, are also the major references for his narrative invention. These historic experiences with the power of uncertainty, complexity and rebellious views on the real have provided Sam Samore with invaluable inspirations. Emerging from the turbulent avant-garde tradition of the 1970s, Sam Samore has relocated his work in the very tension between the heroic confrontation with social reality and the critical but joyful ventures into the imaginary beyond the immediate real. How- ever, his choice is by no means a transcendental one. Instead, he merges himself into the endlessly entangling struggle with the existential paradox (rather than contradiction – as he is aware of) of the real itself. In his work, there is no longer the truly real, nor the genuinely fictional. What has been generated out of this struggle is a “black hole in reality”, to use Slavoj Zizek’s terms. ¹ This is an empty black screen set in the realm of the real to be projected upon with our fantasies. His work, whether using photography or text, functions like a Hitchcockian McGuffin, “the secret propelling the story” ² of the real…