Sean Steadman

1,000,000,000,000

21 February 2020 — 27 June 2020

PNI, London

A Trillion is easily counted and computed, yet its huge scale is hard to visualise. In our mind’s eye, we can hold three apples but not a trillion. It’s interesting to think about these paintings and drawings as representations similar to a very large or infinite number. This number denotes the vast negative space of all possible outcomes that are not brought to fruition.

Painting somehow puts sensations and experiences to otherwise overwhelming complexity, it gives it a body. As a concrete aggregate, it is as singular as the commonplace way a tree, body or a rock is unique. Its particularity has a resemblance to all the other objects and nameable things in the world. This likeness, in kind, seems to be a foundation for arts claim to representation.

We know from neuroscience that our experiences are gated, constructed and approximated. Thanks to evolution, our experiences are operationally efficient. However, art pulls at the loose threads. It makes a point to dwell on the noise, junk and excess which would usually be ejected or sublimated by our senses.

Arthur Schopenhauer, who greatly influenced Freud’s thinking, believed that contemplating arts complexity is a way of overcoming the operational machinations of life. He thought we could become “rid of ourselves” through it.

This escape could be considered the goal of painting. Allowing the forms and their emergent sensations to dictate each work, Steadman’s paintings and drawings appear like they are uncovered as much as composed. This notion of relinquishing control is reminiscent of the John Cage quote often repeated by Philip Guston. Describing the painting process, Guston remarked that the studio empties of the people in your head until“then, if you’re lucky, even you leave”.

Sean Steadman

British artist Sean Steadman is first and foremost a painter. Steadman is invested in the medium’s specificities and its ability to draw out new visual forms. His practice arises from research into the history of image production, from the prehistoric to contemporary visual culture. His process is essentially intuitive and dialectical: after an initial drawing phase, Steadman works on the entirety of the canvas’ surface, applying, erasing, layering until a suitable starting point is achieved. This initial phase is deliberately fast and decisive, so as not to allow critical reflection. The actual making of the image occurs through what Steadman refers to as the “digging down, where the painting is as much uncovered as it is built up from the outside”.

As seen in his solo exhibitions 1,000,000,000,000 and Cascade, all at once, the paintings appear corseted, perforated, entangled, swollen, or torn, insisting on aggregation through anarchic exposure. Through multiple phases over many months, the final composition can often deviate wildly from the original starting point; however this first phase anchors the works later developments. Steadman’s paintings marshal space, even if their structures are utterly mercurial. They are dialectics of schisms, sediments, breakages, the pulverulent and protuberant of colour and composition.

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