Artists

Steven Shearer

Press release

Opening on Friday, April 4, 6 – 8 pm

Galerie Eva Presenhuber is pleased to present The Golden Recline, its seventh exhibition with Canadian artist Steven Shearer.

The photographs in The Golden Recline were sourced from the artist’s extensive collection of found online images depicting individuals asleep. These photographs date back to the early days of the internet when platforms like Picasa, Blogger, and Photobucket played a key role in the hosting and sharing of images. None of these photographs can be found online today, nor can they be reverse image searched. While they may still exist on personal servers or digital cameras, their public-facing presence has, in most cases, vanished from the world.

In this exhibition, the photographs of sleeping bodies strike various poses. Some figures lie completely unconscious, their limbs slack, seemingly detached from the waking world. Others appear spellbound in a haze of intoxication, their faces flushed and bodies loosely arranged. Extreme close-ups emphasize intense, even unsettling details: a thread of drool suspended at the corner of a mouth, or the scrawl of marker ink on unsuspecting exposed skin. In stark contrast, two sleeping babies convey an ethereal calm, their small, still bodies conveying a serene, angelic innocence.