Steven Shearer Canadian, b. 1968
Overview
Scratchy Cheek (working title), 2015
"In general I don’t like to talk about my work. The reason I started making art in the first place is because it’s a solitary experience, a way of passing time alone. Obviously, it’s all dependent upon people seeing it in the end, and I like that there is an audience for it and that people can relate to it; but I kind of hope that it all speaks for itself." -- STEVEN SHEARER
Steven Shearer first rose to prominence in the early 2000s with a body of work rooted in a personal and idiosyncratic engagement with 1970s teen culture and the raw aesthetic of the heavy metal underground .
Mining this subcultural terrain for visual and symbolic connections to the history of painting, Shearer has developed a transhistorical approach to image-making that fuses the everyday with the art historical canon.
Steven Shearer's work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions at leading institutions around the world, affirming his significance in contemporary art.
Most recently, in 2024, Sleep, Death’s Own Brother was presented at The George Economou Collection in Athens, coinciding with the publication of Steven Shearer: Working from Life, a major monograph released by DCV. That same year, Shearer debuted Profaned Travelers at David Zwirner, New York.
In 2016, the Brant Foundation Art Study Center in Greenwich, Connecticut, hosted a retrospective that spanned paintings, drawings, collages, and poems, accompanied by a comprehensive monograph.
Shearer represented Canada at the 54th Venice Biennale in 2011 with Exhume to Consume, titled after a track by British metal band Carcass. His presentation included a monumental mural from his Poems series, dramatically installed on the multi-story façade of the Canadian Pavilion.
Works
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Scratchy Cheek (working title), 2015 -
Bunching & Shading, 2012
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Bastu, 2009
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Guys & Dolls, 2006
Press
Exhibitions
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Selected Works
Group Show - Brussels 22 Apr - 2 Oct 2025The Charles Riva Collection is proud to inaugurate its new exhibition space in the heart of Brussels, a magnificent townhouse that provides a refined and intimate setting for showcasing the...Read more -
LEVEL PART II
Laffanour Galerie Downtown Paris 3 - 26 Oct 2024Laffanour | Galerie Downtown is delighted to unveil the exhibition “LEVEL Part II”, inRead more
collaboration with Charles Riva Collection and François Laffanour and collector and curator Charles Riva bring together contemporary artworks by international artists with iconic pieces by 20th-century designers during Art Basel Paris -
Steven Shearer
Brussels 22 Apr 2015 - 29 Feb 2016In 2006, the MUHKA (Antwerp) dedicated an exhibition entitled Intertidal to the community, in which Shearer, of course, took centre stage, with about ten works. In 2011, the artist was...Read more
