For its inaugural exhibition, Cookie Factory presents Nothing Without Nature by Los Angeles-based artist Sam Falls. Created specifically for the site, the exhibition features new paintings, sculptures, outdoor banners, and a live video installation that bring the immensity of Colorado’s landscapes into the gallery through direct collaboration with the natural world.
Falls’ nomadic process embraces unpredictability and elemental forces. Working en plein air, he allows sunlight, wind, rain, and plant life to shape his canvases—surrendering control and inviting nature to act as co-author. To create the paintings on view, Falls embedded himself in Colorado’s Yampa River Valley and Flat Top Mountains, responding to the region’s ecological richness and layered history. His monumental “drop paintings,” formed by layering flora and natural pigments, act as environmental impressions—intimate maps of place and time. Engaging his body in the process, he embarks on a choreography with nature that gestures toward an essential communion with the earth.
The video installation Sunset / Sunrise transports viewers into nature’s enduring rhythm, broadcasting the perpetual rising and setting of the sun across the globe in real time. Positioned face to face, the dual videos evoke a once-natural cycle now obscured by modern life—offering a contemplative return to time marked not by screens or skylines, but by the shifting light of day and night.
New sculptural benches embedded with gemstones sourced from the Rocky Mountains evoke the land’s healing potential. A series of large-scale textile banners mounted on the building’s facade bear the traces of life’s flux and unpredictability. To create them, Falls laid strips of fabric directly on the ground, capturing the passage of car tires and footsteps—abstract imprints of movement and time that root the work in the region’s physical and poetic terrain.
Taken together, the works in Nothing Without Nature propose a rebalancing: to see nature not as something to conquer, but as something we are inseparable from. Through this ongoing dialogue with the earth, Falls dissolves the boundary between human and landscape. Nature asserts itself not as a backdrop, but as a living force—demanding reverence and reciprocity over mastery.
In the words of Jackson Pollock, “I am nature.” In Nothing Without Nature, Falls extends this sentiment, inviting us to remember that we are not separate from the earth, but deeply entangled within it.
The exhibition embodies Cookie Factory’s mission to present site-specific work that is rooted in the surrounding environment, responsive to place, and resonant with the histories, textures, and communities of Denver and the Rocky Mountains. It reflects our belief that art can be a vehicle for connection, reflection, and change—especially when it begins with where we stand.
