Past Exhibition
- Steven Shearer
Steven Shearer
Greenwich November 13th to April 3rd, 2017
STEVEN SHEARER
The Brant Foundation Art Study Center is pleased to present a solo exhibition of works by Steven Shearer from November 13, 2016, through April 3, 2017. The exhibition, which spans Steven Shearer’s prolific 20-year career working in a variety of media, brings together paintings, drawings, collages and poems to demonstrate the constantly evolving nature of the artist’s practice. Shearer’s work draws upon a visual lexicon of portraiture and representation of the body, often using found imagery that he collects and archives as source material. Through this process, contemporary imagery is distilled into the tradition of portraiture revealing affinities between various modes of figuration throughout history to the present.
Shearer consistently returns to the found imagery he collects to use as the subject matter of his collage works, which incorporate images lifted from various fan magazines as well as from the web. These references often reflect not only his own personal experience of growing up in the suburbs of Vancouver, but also a collective memory of the visual and verbal landscape of suburban and teenage alienation.
The subject of Shearer’s collage works have ranged from metalheads to teen heartthrobs to prefabricated toolsheds. Three collage works will be in view, including Sleep II (2015), a large-scale triptych made up of found photographs of people asleep. Expressions of torment or ecstasy can be found in the manner of their sleeping bodies and faces, resembling those represented in religious paintings from the past. The historical tradition of statuary is evoked via found images of Leif Garrett in Bad Cast (2001), while Scrap #2 (2003), is composed of 132 works on paper ranging from original drawings to found printed material.
Shearer’s “Poems”, on view at The Brant Foundation, also reference source material however much of the text is unique, having been inspired by titles and lyrics from Black & Death Metal songs. In these works white text is rendered on a black ground, as in the facade he created for the Canadian Pavilion at the 2011 Venice Biennale, to create monumental poems that convey overtones of illuminated manuscripts. In describing his works, which juxtapose “bodily, grotesque phrases” with the “austere graphic quality of the black and white graphics,” the artist points to an effect that is both “unreal and funny.” This Shearer exhibition will feature three series of Poems (Poems V, 2005; Poems XXV, 2011; Poems XXXIV, 2013), each consisting of seven drawings in charcoal on rag paper. Though some may find the poems deeply disturbing, there is also humor beyond the visceral impact achieved through their evocation of a Gothic excess and emotional barrier that protect a tormented core.
In contrast to the severity of the heavy charcoal Poems, The Brant Foundation’s exhibition will highlight approximately 45 of Shearer’s ink, oil, crayon and pastel drawings and paintings, many of which are rendered in colorful strokes reminiscent of les Fauves and Impressionists. Shearer’s drawings and paintings express empathy for his often longhaired and androgynous subjects, in whom the works’ romantic tone betrays an awkward vulnerability and isolation. The works on display will include a series of new paintings that mark a shift in Shearer’s painting practice whereby the figures have become untethered from specific references taken from his own archive. The subjects of these paintings have evolved into figures with distinct physical attributes that inhabit densely rendered spaces that are imagined in greater depth and detail that in the illusory spaces found in earlier works.
Artist Biography
Steven Shearer
1968, born in New Westminster, BC, Canada
1992, Emily Carr College of Art & Design, BFA (studio), Vancouver/BC, Canada
1991, Alliance of Independent Colleges of Art c/o NASCAD
New York Summer Studio Programm, New York, NY, USA
Lives and works in Vancouver, BC, Canada
Shearer was chosen to represent Canada in the 2011 Venice Biennale and has been exhibited internationally. Solo exhibitions include Wrong Reflection (Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York, 2013), Double Album: Daniel Guzmán and Steven Shearer (New Museum, New York, 2008), Geometric Healing (Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich, 2010) and The Power Plant ( Toronto, 2007).
Related Links:
The Brant Foundation Loan Program: Steven Shearer – The Late Follower
SOLO
| 2017 |
Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich |
| 2017 |
National Gallery of Canada, Ottowa, ON, Canada |
| 2016 |
The Brant Foundation Art Study Center, Greenwich, CT |
| 2014 |
Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich |
| 2013 |
Gavin Brown’s enterprise, Harlem, NY, USA |
| 2012 |
Bad Run, Galleria Franco Noero, Torino, Italy |
| 2011 |
"54th International Art Exhibition - La Biennale de Venezia", Canada Pavilion, Venice, Italy |
| 2010 |
"Geometric Healing", Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich, Switzerland |
| 2009 |
"Art 40 Basel, Art Unlimited", Basel, Switzerland"Uncle Jack, Mom & Steve, The Apartment", Vancouver Canada |
| 2008 |
"Double Album. Daniel Guzman and Steven Shearer", MUCA. University Museum of Arts and Sciences, Mexico City, Mexico"Double Album. Daniel Guzman and Steven Shearer, New Museum of Contemporary Art", New York, NY, USA |
| 2007 |
"The Power Plant", Toronto, ON, Canada"Stuart Shave / Modern Art", London, UK"Poems", Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, UK"One-artist shows", De Appel. Center for Contemporary Art, Amsterdam, the Netherlands |
| 2006 |
Franco Noero Gallery, Torino, Italy |
| 2005 |
Illingworth Kerr Gallery, Alberta College of Art and Design, Calgary, AB, CanadaGalerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich, Switzerland |
| 2004 |
CAG Vancouver Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver, BC, Canada"Art Statements, Art 35 Base"l, Basel, SwitzerlandGoodwater Gallery, Toronto, ON, Canada |
| 2003 |
Galleria Franco Noero, Torino, ItalyBlum & Poe, Santa Monica, CA, USA |
| 2002 |
Mars Gallery, Tokyo, JapanColin DeLand American Fine Arts Co., NY, USA |
| 2001 |
"Pussyfootin", Monte Clark Gallery, Vancouver, BC, Canada |
| 2000 |
"Swinging Lumpen", Or Gallery, Vancouver, BC, Canada |
| 1999 |
Colin DeLand American Fine Arts Co. NY, USA"Craftmonster", Monte Clark Gallery, Vancouver, Canada |
| 1996 |
S. L. Simpson Gallery, Toronto, ON, Canada |
| 1994 |
S. L. Simpson Gallery, Toronto, ON, Canada |
| 1992 |
Perel Gallery, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, BC, Canada |
GROUP
| 2015 |
"Works on Paper", Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich, Switzerland |
| 2014 |
Trouble Boy, Corner College, Zurich |
| 2013 |
"Altars of Madness", Confort Moderne, Poitiers, France |
| 2012 |
"Mash Up: Collage from 1930 to the Present", L&M Art, Los Angeles, CA, USA |
| 2011 |
"Shore, Forest and Beyond. Art from the Audain Collection", Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, Canada |
| 2010 |
"It Is What It Is, Recent Acquisitions of New Canadian Art", National Gellery of Canada, Musée des Beaux – arts du Canada, Ottawa, ON, Canada |
| 2009 |
"Beg Borrow and Steal", Rubell Family Collection, Miami, FL, USA |
| 2008 |
Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Group Show, Zurich, Switzerland |
| 2007 |
Sweet Bird Of Youth, Arndt & Partner, Berlin, Germany |
| 2006 |
Sobey Art Award 2006, The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts - Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, Montreal, QC, Canada |
| 2005 |
Intertidal - Vancouver Art Now, MuHKA Museum voor Hedendaagse Kunst, Antwerp, Belgium |
| 2004 |
Untitled - Pin Up - Contemporary Collage and Drawing, Tate Modern, London, UK |
| 2003 |
"Go Johnny Go! – Die E-Gitarre – Kunst und Mythos", Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, Austria |
| 2002 |
"Rock My World: Recent Art and the Memory of Rock’n’Roll", CCAC Wattis Institute, San Francisco/CA, USA (curated by Ralph Rugoff) |
| 2001 |
Pat Hearn Gallery, New York, NY, USA |
| 2000 |
llingworth Kerr Gallery, Alberta College of Art & Design, Calgary, AL, Canada |
| 1999 |
"East International 1999", The Gallery at Norwich University, Norwich School of Art, Norwich, Great Britain (curated by Peter Doig and Roy Arden) |
| 1998 |
"6": New Vancouver Modern, The Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, UBC, Vancouver, BC, Canada |
| 1996 |
"New Perspectives", Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, ON, Canada |
| 1995 |
"Young Contemporaries", London Regional Museum, London, UK |
| 1994 |
"Three Artists", CAG Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver, BC, Canada |
I see the contemporary images that I reference as an extension of all historical images. They’re all connected organically. My knowledge of the past helps me enter into and navigate the found images that I use as a starting point. My image archive stems from a serious, almost forensic interest in how images are made, how they’re formed both physically and theoretically. I’m interested in making things that explore how we all remember and idealize each other. Today’s images are echoes of how people have always been depicted, throughout history.
– Steven Shearer, The White Review, July, 2011.
I was happy to make a work that allowed for both genders and all ages. What attracted me to that subject was how I saw religious figuration cropping up in contemporary pictures of sleeping people posted on the Internet. There was something candid about the images of sleeping bodies. Many were not found asleep in bed but in public places or situations that left them propped up and kind of mannered while lost in sleep. It created all these kinds of figures that looked like they could be in a religious painting by Anthony van Dyck.
– Steven Shearer, Double Album: Daniel Guzman and Steven Shearer, New Museum April 23-July 6, 2008
My paintings only rarely contain traces of color or resolution of these source images. While they often begin with individual source images like jpegs or a historical painting that intrigues me, this has increasingly become only a starting point, as I find that the painting always ends up looking very different from what I have imagined. I've also found that as I've been making more paintings, they have come to inspire one another. The boy in Night Train, a recent painting, wasn't based on any source images, but came out of a series of preparatory sketches I made.
– Steven Shearer, Steven Shearer: Exhume to Consume, National Gallery of Canada, 2011
