Steven Shearer
Eva Presenhuber is pleased to announce the fifth exhibition with Canadian artist Steven Shearer.
For more than 20 years, Shearer has worked with a wide range of materials such as print, sculpture, painting, drawing, and collaged found photography. Shearer has become increasingly well known for his adept portraits of figures painted within interior spaces. These portraits recall figures from past music subcultures and art historical painting, and are rendered employing stylistic references from Fauvism and Symbolism to German Romantic Art. Reconfiguring Renaissance systems of perspective, he creates complex perspectival elements within the compositions that animate the viewer’s engagement with his paintings.
This exhibition presents paintings and drawings, most of which depict archetypes of artists in studios with their muses. The subjects in the paintings are more similar to effigies than portrayals of actual people. In many cases, the psychology of the subject appears to be reflected onto their interior surroundings, comparable to a Symbolist approach.
Atheist’s Commission (2018) depicts an artist who faces the viewer directly in a confrontational and open manner, with arms outspread, and whose body and striped pants relax into the couch. Above the patterned couch is his commissioned work: a version of a religious painting that shows the head and torso of a body reclining across the canvas. It is delicately rendered with luminous thin veins underneath the pale pink skin. The flesh is remotely sexualized but also bloated and corpse-like. It is as if the artist in the painting is responding to the hypocrisy of historical religious painting that, with its abundant rendering of dead flesh in ecstasy, registers the spirit of the body in the physical world that ends with death and decay. With ornate gold embellishment surrounding the soaring body, the painting is actualized as an atheistic and irreverent religious painting.
In another painting, Uncle Hermann (2018), an artist holds a small sculpture of a woman cradling a child. With a makeshift curtain in the background, an old apron, and the caricatured physicality by which the artist is holding the sculpture, the painting appears to show a B-side version of the classical trope of the artist in the studio. In actuality the sculpture and the color-blocking of green, yellow, and pink in the figure’s face, bear resemblance to the artwork by mid-century Swiss artist Hermann Scherer, a lesser known colleague of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. The near verisimilitude of Shearer and Scherer is not happenstance. At times, Shearer employs subtle echoes from art history to situate his own artistic subjectivity. The painting’s scene condenses an artist’s time spent working in the studio potentially over months, yet we also imagine it as a story of an artist playing roulette with posterity.
The Late Follower (2017) is also evocative of a past era and setting. The painting is a portrait of a truncated body. It is a torso of a statue on a sculptor’s trestle rendered with such attention to human expression that the statue is inevitably personified. Muscular and resolutely un-hollowed out, the body/statue has blue cat-like eyes and wears fish-scale chainmail. It recalls Shearer’s vivisection drawings that studied the body in decay, combining figures from underground music with fantasies of self-inflicted violence. Framing this statue are unfinished canvases, furniture, and a ghost-like figure that appears to hold up a brush to a painting partially hidden behind a stack of other canvases. Each of these elements contributes to a trompe-l’oeil effect. The statue is a painting within a painting no matter how real or unreal he may appear.
Shearer’s paintings are embedded in art history to such an extent that one might assume each has a certain antecedent, but this is not necessarily the case. The likeness that is aspired to is not based on an actual person but is triggered by an aggregation of faces from the past and present. Shearer creates his own universe of archetypes, in which the characters seem to be related across paintings. But rather than being part of a family-genealogy, their relation is a different one. It seems as if they created one another, as if the small figures in The Chiseller’s Figurines (2018) are from another painting that have come to life, or as if the painter from Working from Life (2018) was working on other paintings in the show. The distortions and mirroring that result from the oeuvre as a whole suggest a character study of shifting sensibilities.
Tillman Severin
hidden
Uncle H
2017
Oil, traces of charcoal on poly canvas; artist's frame
Image 36 x 28.5 x 2 cm / 14 1/8 x 11 1/8 x 7/8 in
Frame 55 x 47 x 4.5 cm / 21 3/4 x 18 5/8 x 1 3/4 in
© Steven Shearer
Woman and Child
2018
Oil, charcoal and ink on poly canvas, framed
Image 86.5 x 76 cm / 34 x 30 in
Frame 105.5 x 95.5 x 4.5 cm / 41 1/2 x 37 1/2 x 1 3/4 in
© Steven Shearer
Vulgarian Appliqué
2016
Oil pastel, oil on linen; artist's frame
Image 35.5 x 28 cm / 14 x 11 in
Frame 61 x 53.5 x 5 cm / 24 x 21 x 2 in
© Steven Shearer
Sculptor and satyr
2016
Oil on canvas in artist's frame
Image 81.5 x 66 cm / 32 x 26 in
Frame 99.5 x 84.5 x 4 cm / 39 1/4 x 33 1/4 x 1 1/2 in
© Steven Shearer
Stairs
2016
Ink, oil, oil pastel on canvas in artist's frame
Image 203 x 71 cm / 80 x 28 in
Frame 226.5 x 94.5 x 5 cm / 89 1/4 x 37 1/4 x 2 in
© Steven Shearer
Uncle Hermann
2018
Oil, ink and varnish on poly canvas, framed
Image 81 x 60 cm / 31 7/8 x 23 5/8 in
Frame 100 x 79 x 4.5 cm / 39 3/8 x 31 1/8 x 1 3/4 in
© Steven Shearer
Chiseller's Cabinet
2014
Oil on canvas; artist's frame
Image 122 x 91.5 cm / 48 x 36 in
Frame 135.5 x 110 x 4 cm / 53 3/8 x 43 1/4 x 1 1/2 in
© Steven Shearer
Synthist
2018
Oil and oil pastel on linen stretched over panel
Image 36 x 28.5 x 4 cm / 14 1/4 x 11 1/8 x 1 5/8 in
Frame 61.5 x 53.5 x 7 cm / 24 1/8 x 21 x 2 3/4 in
© Steven Shearer
Atheist's Commission
2018
Oil and ink on poly canvas, framed
Image 183 x 127 x 4 cm / 72 1/8 x 50 x 1 5/8 in
Frame 205.5 x 149.5 x 5 cm / 80 7/8 x 58 7/8 x 2 in
© Steven Shearer
Fop's Frame
2015
Oil paint and oil pastel on canvas; artist's frame
Private Collection
Image 45.5 x 35.5 x 2 cm / 18 x 14 x 7/8 in
Frame 72 x 61.5 x 5 cm / 28 1/4 x 24 1/8 x 2 in
© Steven Shearer
The Late Follower
2017
Oil paint, oil & wax pastel, ink on poly canvas mounted on board in artist's frame; 2 parts
Image 183.5 x 117.5 cm / 72 1/4 x 46 1/4 in
Frame 201.5 x 136 cm / 79 3/8 x 53 5/8 in
© Steven Shearer
Heraldic Man
2018
Oil and ink on poly canvas, framed
Image 61 x 45.5 cm / 24 x 18 in
Frame 80 x 64.5 cm / 31 1/2 x 25 3/8 in
© Steven Shearer
The Chiseller’s Figurines
2018
Oil and ink on poly canvas, in artist frame
Image 90 x 63.5 cm / 35 1/2 x 25 in
Frame 109 x 82.5 cm / 43 x 32 1/2 in
© Steven Shearer
Working from Life
2018
Oil on linen stretched over panel, in artist frame
Image 33 x 25.5 x 2.5 cm / 13 x 10 x 1 in
Frame 54 x 46.5 x 4.5 cm / 21 1/4 x 18 1/4 x 1 3/4 in
© Steven Shearer
Study for the Late Follower
2015
Oil and chalk pastel on inkjet print
Sheet 89 x 59.5 cm / 35 1/8 x 23 1/2 in
Frame 106.5 x 77 x 4 cm / 41 7/8 x 30 1/4 x 1 1/2 in
© Steven Shearer
Notebook Drawings
Not dated
Ink on paper; 6 parts
Frame 46.5 x 38.5 x 4 cm / 18 1/4 x 15 1/4 x 1 1/2 in
© Steven Shearer
Golden Eyes
2013
Oil pastel on Japan paper
Sheet 40 x 32.5 x 1.5 cm / 15 3/4 x 12 7/8 x 5/8 in
Frame 69 x 58 x 4 cm / 27 1/4 x 22 7/8 x 1 1/2 in
© Steven Shearer
Untitled
2009
Crayon on rag paper
Sheet 24 x 15 cm / 9 1/2 x 6 in
Frame 47.5 x 35.5 x 4 cm / 18 5/8 x 14 x 1 1/2 in
© Steven Shearer
Study for the Young Symbolist
2013
Crayon on paper
Sheet 24.5 x 15.5 cm / 9 5/8 x 6 1/8 in
Frame 43 x 35.5 x 4 cm / 17 x 14 x 1 1/2 in
© Steven Shearer
The Long Armed Torso
2010
Ink on paper
Sheet 11.5 x 9 cm / 4 1/2 x 3 1/2 in
Frame 37.5 x 31 x 4 cm / 14 3/4 x 12 1/4 x 1 1/2 in
© Steven Shearer
Torso Study
2015
Ink on paper
Sheet 14 x 9 cm / 5 1/2 x 3 5/8 in
Frame 43 x 36 x 4 cm / 16 7/8 x 14 1/8 x 1 5/8 in
© Steven Shearer
Study for Working from Life
2018
Crayon on paper
Sheet 17.5 x 12.5 cm / 7 x 5 in
Frame 43 x 36 x 4 cm / 16 7/8 x 14 1/8 x 1 5/8 in
© Steven Shearer
Study for Uncle Hermann
2017
Crayon on paper
Sheet 9.5 x 7 cm / 3 3/4 x 2 3/4 in
Frame 37.5 x 31 x 4 cm / 14 3/4 x 12 1/4 x 1 1/2 in
© Steven Shearer
Study for the Young Symbolist IV
2013
Ink on paper
Sheet 11.5 x 9 cm / 4 5/8 x 3 1/2 in
Frame 37.5 x 31 x 4 cm / 14 3/4 x 12 1/4 x 1 1/2 in
© Steven Shearer
Study for the Young Symbolist III
2013
Crayon on paper
Sheet 23.5 x 17.5 cm / 9 3/8 x 6 7/8 in
Frame 43 x 36 x 4 cm / 16 7/8 x 14 1/8 x 1 5/8 in
© Steven Shearer
Study for the Young Symbolist II
2012
Ink on paper
Sheet 17 x 10 cm / 6 5/8 x 3 7/8 in
Frame 43 x 36 x 4 cm / 16 7/8 x 14 1/8 x 1 5/8 in
© Steven Shearer
Study for the Young Symbolist I
2012
Ink on paper
Sheet 12 x 7.5 cm / 4 3/4 x 3 in
Frame 37.5 x 31 x 4 cm / 14 3/4 x 12 1/4 x 1 1/2 in
© Steven Shearer
Study for Sculptor and Satyr
2016
Ink on paper
Sheet 9.5 x 8 cm / 3 3/4 x 3 1/4 in
Frame 37.5 x 31 x 4 cm / 14 3/4 x 12 1/4 x 1 1/2 in
© Steven Shearer
Study for the Convalescent
2005
Ballpoint pen on paper
Sheet 37 x 20.5 cm / 14 1/2 x 8 1/8 in
Frame 61 x 49.5 x 4 cm / 24 x 19 1/2 x 1 1/2 in
© Steven Shearer
Study for Disemboweled Book
2015
Ink on paper
Sheet 11.5 x 8 cm / 4 1/2 x 3 1/8 in
Frame 37.5 x 31 x 4 cm / 14 3/4 x 12 1/4 x 1 1/2 in
© Steven Shearer
Study for Chiseller’s Cabinet
2014
Ink on paper
Sheet 11.5 x 9 cm / 4 5/8 x 3 1/2 in
Frame 37.5 x 31 x 4 cm / 14 3/4 x 12 1/4 x 1 1/2 in
Study for Atheist’s Commission II
2017
Crayon on paper
Sheet 18 x 13 cm / 7 x 5 in
Frame 43 x 35.5 x 4 cm / 16 7/8 x 14 x 1 5/8 in
© Steven Shearer
Study for Atheist’s Commission I
2017
Crayon on paper
Sheet 17.5 x 8.5 cm / 6 7/8 x 3 1/4 in
Frame 43 x 35.5 x 4 cm / 16 7/8 x 14 x 1 5/8 in
© Steven Shearer
Smiler
2015
Ink on paper
Sheet 11.5 x 9 cm / 4 1/2 x 3 1/2 in
Frame 37.5 x 31 x 4 cm / 14 3/4 x 12 1/4 x 1 1/2 in
© Steven Shearer
Study for Sculptor and Satyr II
2016
Crayon on paper
Sheet 18 x 9.5 cm / 7 x 3 5/8 in
Frame 43 x 36 x 4 cm / 16 7/8 x 14 1/8 x 1 5/8 in
© Steven Shearer
Sad Face
2015
Crayon on paper
Sheet 15 x 10 cm / 6 x 4 in
Frame 43 x 36 x 4 cm / 16 7/8 x 14 1/8 x 1 5/8 in
© Steven Shearer
Purple Convalescent
2013
Coloured chalk on paper
Sheet 29 x 19.5 cm / 11 3/8 x 7 3/4 in
Frame 52.5 x 42 x 4 cm / 20 3/4 x 16 1/2 x 1 1/2 in
© Steven Shearer
Plopper
2014
Ink on paper
Sheet 8.5 x 10.5 cm / 3 1/4 x 4 1/8 in
Frame 37.5 x 31 x 4 cm / 14 3/4 x 12 1/4 x 1 1/2 in
© Steven Shearer
Painter in Profile
2013
Ink on paper
Sheet 11.5 x 8 cm / 4 1/2 x 3 1/8 in
Frame 37.5 x 31 x 4 cm / 14 3/4 x 12 1/4 x 1 5/8 in
© Steven Shearer
Painter’s Studio
2013
Ballpoint on paper
Sheet 10.5 x 7.5 cm / 4 1/8 x 2 7/8 in
Frame 37.5 x 31 x 4 cm / 14 3/4 x 12 1/4 x 1 1/2 in
© Steven Shearer
Mirror Portrait
2015
Crayon on paper
Sheet 21.5 x 9.5 cm / 8 1/2 x 3 7/8 in
Frame 43 x 36 x 4 cm / 16 7/8 x 14 1/8 x 1 5/8 in
© Steven Shearer
Night Studio
2015
Oil pastel on inkjet print
Sheet 28 x 21.5 cm / 11 x 8 1/2 in
Frame 46.5 x 38.5 x 4 cm / 18 1/4 x 15 1/4 x 1 1/2 in
© Steven Shearer
Interior Study
Not dated
Pen on paper
Sheet 14 x 8.5 cm / 5 1/2 x 3 1/4 in
Frame 43 x 35.5 x 4 cm / 16 7/8 x 14 x 1 5/8 in
© Steven Shearer
Frustrated Painter
2016
Ink on paper
Sheet 9 x 7.5 cm / 3 5/8 x 3 in
Frame 37.5 x 31 x 4 cm / 14 3/4 x 12 1/4 x 1 1/2 in
© Steven Shearer
Bust
2016
Ink on paper
Sheet 11.5 x 9 cm / 4 1/2 x 3 1/2 in
Frame 37.5 x 31 x 4 cm / 14 3/4 x 12 1/4 x 1 1/2 in
© Steven Shearer
Blue Boy
2014
Coloured chalk on paper
Sheet 26.5 x 19.5 cm / 10 3/8 x 7 3/4 in
Frame 43 x 35 x 4 cm / 16 7/8 x 13 7/8 x 1 1/2 in
© Steven Shearer
Basement Studio
2017
Crayon on paper
Sheet 11.5 x 10 cm / 4 5/8 x 3 7/8 in
Frame 43 x 36 x 4 cm / 16 7/8 x 14 1/8 x 1 5/8 in
© Steven Shearer
Set of 9 individual drawings
2010–2018
Various sizes and techniques, framed; 9 parts
Various dimensions
© Steven Shearer
Set of 9 individual drawings
2012–2017
Various sizes and techniques, framed; 9 parts
Various dimensions
© Steven Shearer
Set of 6 individual drawings
2013–2017
Various sizes and techniques, framed; 6 parts
Various dimensions
© Steven Shearer