Sucker is one of Samantha Salzinger’s original artworks transformed into a sculptural, functional object. The design depicts a hand built diorama of whipped cream mountains, cotton candy clouds, and heart shaped lollipops collapsing into a glossy red pool; A world that appears playful at first glance yet quickly reveals its underlying instability.
The piece emerges from the ongoing body of work Sugar Coated, which constructs miniature landscapes that critique the seductions of consumer culture. Through imagery associated with pleasure, indulgence, and childhood fantasy, the work builds environments that hover between desire and decay. These scenes lure viewers with spectacle and surface, only to expose the exhaustion and excess concealed embedded beneath.
Samantha Salzinger is a multidisciplinary artist who combines the use of sculpture, photography, video, and installation through intricately handcrafted dioramas. Her fantastical yet unsettling landscapes explore themes of overconsumption, artificiality, and loss, prompting reflection on the viewer’s relationship to the environment and contemporary culture. Based in South Florida for over thirty years, she holds an MFA from Yale University and a BFA from Florida International University.
Her recent exhibitions include Transitions (Coral Springs Museum of Art, 2025), Ping Pong Basel (Switzerland, 2025), Photography, It’s About Time (Doral Contemporary Art Museum, 2025), and No Looking Back (Girls’ Club Collection, 2025). She has received three South Florida Cultural Consortium Fellowships and the 2025 Artist Innovation Grant, and her work is held in major public and private collections.
Salzinger is Professor and Chair of the Art Department at Palm Beach State College.
out MAD ArtsMAD Arts is a museum, community hub, and laboratory for art and technology founded in 2020, its flagship headquarters is a 50,000-square-foot space in South Florida that facilitates visionary exhibitions and projects by individuals, collectives, non-profits, and companies.
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