A five-year collaboration with Galerie ELLEPHANT encompassing solo presentations, group exhibitions, curated shows, an art fair, and the design of custom VR gallery furniture.
Samuel was represented by Galerie ELLEPHANT from 2018 to 2023. The partnership began with a solo presentation during ELEKTRA 2019, where he showed Salvo at the gallery. Over the following years, the collaboration expanded: he presented the Museum of Other Realities (for which he designed the virtual architecture), participated in the group show Floating Paper alongside artists like Skawennati and Jean-Pierre Gauthier, showed CULTVRAL Gallery as part of the gallery’s VR program, curated two solo exhibitions of other XR artists, and presented work at Art Toronto 2019 with OASIS.
Alongside the exhibitions, Samuel designed the physical infrastructure needed to show VR in a gallery context and contributed to the Immersive Summer Art Exhibition in 2021. The collaboration addressed a fundamental challenge: how do you present an immersive, solitary VR experience within the social space of a gallery? The answer required not only strong virtual work but thoughtful physical design: custom furniture, curatorial frameworks, and exhibition protocols.
As part of the collaboration, Samuel designed a custom VR plinth, a minimal pedestal with a subtle door concealing a small form-factor computer, keyboard, and mouse inside. Only a single cable and the headset emerged from the top, presenting the VR equipment with the same material gravity as a sculptural object. An invitation rather than a technical setup.
The plinth served across multiple contexts: gallery shows at ELLEPHANT, the OASIS presentation at Art Toronto 2019, and opening nights where hundreds of visitors cycled through the VR experience. It became a reusable piece of exhibition infrastructure.
How do you present an immersive, solitary experience within the social context of a gallery? The answer required designing not just the virtual spaces, but the physical objects and protocols that bridge between them.
Samuel also curated two solo exhibitions at ELLEPHANT, bringing international VR artists into the gallery’s program. The curatorial work addressed both the selection of virtual pieces and the physical conditions of their display, treating the gallery setup as part of the artistic experience.
This dual role as exhibiting artist and curator at ELLEPHANT laid the groundwork for the eleven VR and AR exhibitions he later curated at Galerie Art Mûr, where the same attention to the physical presentation of virtual work became a defining element of his practice.
Over five years and more than six exhibitions, the collaboration with ELLEPHANT established a working model for how VR art could be shown, curated, and experienced in a contemporary gallery. From the ELEKTRA 2019 solo to Floating Paper to the Museum of Other Realities, the partnership demonstrated that immersive virtual work could hold its own alongside traditional media, given the right physical conditions and curatorial care.
The experience shaped Samuel’s broader practice: the attention to exhibition design, the dual perspective of artist and curator, and the conviction that the medium deserves its own exhibition language all trace back to these years at ELLEPHANT.
