Whether you're a fan of Sean Landers's prolific, varied, purposely self-aggrandizing and simultaneously self-puncturing career or not (and no one is neutral), there's one thing that's indisputable: He's wickedly funny. And nowhere is his humor sharper than in these previously uncollected drawings from 1991-92, in which a cast of art-world strivers, including gallerists, painters and groupies, parade across the page with all their hilarious insecurities on display. The most prominent form in which Landers delivers his witty apercus through these characters is the T-shirt slogan: "I used to show in the 80s"; "I went to Yale too"; or "I emerged as an artist during the Gulf War." In a drafting style that resembles a cleaned-up R. Crumb and with his trademark hand-lettered misspellings, Landers takes on all art types, exposing the shallowness of the successful artist and the flop, the egotism of the collector and critic, in sometimes bawdy and frequently laugh-out-loud satire. Amazingly, this is a book that would be equally at home in a museum restroom stall or an exhibition vitrine.
This catalogue was published on the occasion of the exhibition Sean Landers, at the Andrea Rosen Gallery, February 7 - March 14, 1992. Featuring cartoons by Sean Landers, made in the winter of 1991 to 1992.
Publisher: Regency Arts Press, New York, 2005
Language: English
Softcover: 140 pages
Dimensions: 4.5 x 0.5 x 6 inches
IBSN: 978-0974903743
About the artist
Sean Landers (b. 1962, Palmer, MA)
Sean Landers is a painter and multimedia artist living and working in New York. Landers received his MFA from Yale University School of Art in 1986 and his BFA from Philadelphia College of Art in 1984. From confessions poured out in weblike formations on legal pads to revisions of Hogarth paintings and lonely clowns at sea, Landers’s artworks span an enormous breadth of subjects and touch on existential themes. Landers has exhibited widely and had solo exhibitions at Le Consortium, Dijon, France (2020); greengrassi, London (2020); Galerie Rodolphe Janssen, Brussels, Belgium (2019); Ben Brown Gallery, Hong Kong (2019); Capitain Petzel, Berlin (2016); Taka Ishii Gallery, Tokyo (2015); Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, (2010); and the Kunsthalle Zürich, Switzerland (2004).
His work has been included in exhibitions at the Musée Magritte, Brussels (2017); ICA, Miami (2017); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2016); Deichtorhallen Hamburg (2015); Museum of Modern Art, New York (2013); New Museum, New York (2013); DESTE Foundation, Athens (2013); Tampa Museum of Art, Tampa (2011); Hessel Museum of Art, Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson (2011); Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2011); Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Germany (2009); Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams (2009); Musée d’Art Contemporain de Bordeaux, France (2009); White Columns, New York (2008); Kunstmuseum Luzern, Lucerne, Switzerland (2008); 4th Berlin Biennial, Germany (2006); and MoMA PS1, Long Island City (2006).
His works are included in public collections including the Tate Modern, London; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Fundación/Colección Jumex, Mexico City; Sammlung Goetz, Munich, Germany; The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California; and The Brooklyn Museum, New York; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Sammlung Falckenberg, Hamburg; Seattle Art Museum, Washington; Denver Art Museum, Colorado; Walker Art Center, Minnesota; and The Kistefos Museum and Sculpture Garden, Jefnaker, Norway, among many others.
