Steven Shearer: ‘I began to consider the web as a form of sarcophagus’ – The Artwork Newspaper

The Canadian artist Steven Shearer usually employs stylistic references from artwork historical past—from Symbolism to German Romanticism—in his portraits of figures from music subcultures. His metalheads and punks kind an ongoing exploration of up to date types of white masculinity. He has additionally labored with textual content items, notably when representing Canada on the Venice Biennale in 2011, in addition to discovered imagery, corresponding to Sleep II (2015), a colossal collage of hundreds of pictures, all sourced on-line, of individuals asleep. In recent times he has returned to the theme of sleep in works introduced on billboards and in galleries.

Though not work, these enormously enlarged pictures convey a painterly really feel, and Shearer is particularly attentive to the methods by which they relate to artwork historical past and themes of spiritual figuration. This spring, he premiers a brand new choice of enlarged pictures of snoozing individuals in The Golden Recline at Galerie Eva Presenhuber in Zurich.

The Artwork Newspaper: I at all times noticed you primarily as a painter. Are you able to clarify the connection between the photographic pictures and the work?

Steven Shearer: I by no means take pictures. I by no means had that impulse. For me it’s extra about all the photographs that exist on the market, particularly on the web. The truth that they’re nameless and someway unselfconscious, but distributed worldwide, attracts me. There’s something poetic about that. I began amassing pictures as reference materials for work and sooner or later this exercise grew to become significant in itself. I appeared for methods to present the archives some presentable kinds.

You generally embody these archive works in portray exhibitions. However in Profaned Vacationers, your current exhibition at David Zwirner in New York, there have been no conventional work, proper?

That’s appropriate. Solely enlarged photographic pictures on canvas. All exhibiting individuals asleep.

What attracted you to the theme?

What made sleep engaging as a topic was its universality. It makes these works very totally different from most of my different works based mostly on discovered pictures which have a way more particular focus, like Swedish or Norwegian music from a sure interval. Sleep is the other to that. I downloaded these pictures 15 years in the past and one of many standards for choosing them this time was reverse trying to find them. These are all pictures that may not be simply discovered, if in any respect. It could seem that they’re not existent. I began to consider the web as a form of sarcophagus. The photographs appear to be utterly buried. They’re dormant, useless or disembodied.

Why do you suppose they exist within the first place?

For private causes, I assume. After which there was the novelty of having the ability to share pictures with individuals on-line with out realising that it could be disseminated world wide.

Would you say among the figures seem useless?

I’m conscious among the pictures have a deathly facet to them, however to be sincere, I don’t suppose I might have been capable of spend a lot time piecing these works collectively if that may be the main target. The photographs I singled out, pondering that they’d work on this bigger scale, appear to me to embody life and maybe reminiscence. This isn’t a morbid pursuit.

Are you that these individuals is perhaps dreaming, maybe inhabiting different worlds?

Nicely, the place is that individual once they’re in entrance of us however not current? The vulnerability and unselfconsciousness of the topic is, I believe, what these works actually are about. However the vulnerability is type of overcome by the dimensions. The energy of them has to do with the dimensions and the sequence of going from one to the subsequent. Being in a room confronted by them, going from one to a different, that’s the purpose.

They don’t actually seem like images—they really feel like work.

If I didn’t strategy these footage from a painter’s perspective, I might not have an concept of easy methods to arrive at these outcomes. Portray—and maybe one might say the historical past of portray—offers the toolkit for me.

What do you take note of when creating them?

The primary factor was easy methods to cope with empty area and easy methods to deal with the noise, areas the place you’ll be able to counsel extra particulars and others the place you’ll be able to preserve the attention circulating. I needed to do refined changes to the composition and the colors.

Are you actively highlighting formal points and painterly qualities that someway make the viewer consider historic works?

Sure. The primary cue that got here up after I checked out these “enlarged sleeps” was the echo of spiritual figuration. With my up to date work and my references to standard tradition, I’ve at all times been drawn to issues that resonate with this artwork historic feeling, whether or not it’s portraiture varieties, virtually like a phrenological body, or the mannerism that some musicians are taking up when they’re making footage of themselves, echoing German Romanticism or Actionist expressions of physique manipulation and degradation.

What do these historic references add?

If I could make the work echo our bodies and portraits from the previous, it’s a robust factor. It brings these ghosts into the work. As soon as I discovered the themes of spiritual figuration, I used to be satisfied that sleep is a crucial topic. And it’s a shared expertise.

And now you’re opening The Golden Recline, a second exhibition round that common theme. Have a few of these been displayed earlier than?

No, not as these particular person enlargements. It’s all new. Every picture within the present is exclusive, not editioned. Normally after I make a print work it could be an version of three however these are singular. It’s how they’re particular person and the way they relate to portray that pursuits me, versus the multitude of pictures within the archive works.

And the way do they differ from the final present thematically?

These compositions are extra chaotic. The figures are extra thrown off stability in them. And there may be maybe extra of a Surrealist absurdity to a few of them. I assume that’s why I felt I might do one other present, it is going to have a really totally different really feel. Perhaps this new choice is extra pedestrian, the photographs are much less arty. In a approach, it’s a little bit of a return to my sleep archive as a type of anthropological examine. The photographs are extra set in place: carpet, leather-based sofa, a automobile, being drunk, pranks…

Are you able to clarify the enlargement course of and the way you edit the images?

AI and conventional photoshop enlargements weren’t efficient so I needed to provide you with methods to weave totally different ranges of noise. The enlargement course of is someplace between 7,000% and 12,000%. When blowing one thing up that a lot there may be extra extrapolated info than unique info contained within the picture. So some sort of digital grain has to fill out all that vacant area. That’s the place the painterly strategy turns into needed.

In 2015, you created Sleep II, which is perhaps known as an atlas of sleep. Does the idea of an atlas have something to do with artwork historian Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas?

I usually name these tasks archives slightly than atlases. However in fact, there are inspirations. I might additionally point out the German artist Hans-Peter Feldmann’s approach of working with discovered imagery.

How did this archival strategy truly begin?

Realising that there was an enormous archive of pictures of Black Sabbath albums up on the market on eBay was key. I found this beginner picture documentation: somebody displaying the albums on the market on their mattress. The pictures additionally conveyed home info on the periphery of the picture. These pictures weren’t directed by any aesthetic pursuit and this unselfconscious type of image-making that takes on a worldwide accessibility actually me. And it nonetheless does.

These pictures will need to have been taken for very particular audiences, very specialised.

Sure, the opposite archive items are about recognisable individuals from the current previous. They comprise extra obscure references or subcultures. However for me, on an editorial degree, I at all times think about somebody sooner or later as the best viewers. You don’t must know what any of the individuals are to have interaction. And Sleep II was a great way to increase that—it was good to have one thing common that anybody might relate to, now and sooner or later.

Biography

Born: 1968 New Westminster, Canada

Lives and works: Vancouver

Schooling: 1991 Alliance of Impartial Schools of Artwork c/o Nascad New York Summer season Studio Programme; 1992 Emily Carr College of Artwork & Design, Vancouver

Key exhibits: 2007 De Appel, Amsterdam; 2011 Canada Pavilion, Venice Biennale; 2016 Brant Basis, Greenwich, Connecticut; 2023 George Economou Assortment, Athens; 2024 FLAG Artwork Basis, New York

Represented by: Galerie Eva Presenhuber and David Zwirner

• Steven Shearer: The Golden Recline, Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich, 5 April-16 Might