Sean Townley at Antoine Levi

Artist: Sean Townley

Exhibition title: Skin Grafts for CT Scans

Venue: Antoine Levi, Paris, France

Date: May 28 – July 16, 2015

Photography: Claire Dorn, images courtesy of the artist and Antoine Levi

Galerie Antoine Levi is pleased to present Skin Grafts for CT Scans, an exhibition of new works by Los Angeles based artist Sean Townley.

For his second exhibition with the gallery the artist presents a new body of work in which the notion of surface capture is approached from multiple directions. Drawing upon a collection of three dimensional scans of classical statuary in which subjects such as animals, martyrs and satyrs are depicted flayed, the artist has produced three cast carbon fiber skins. These eviscerated forms are shown alongside a calfskin scale model of the gallery that has been flattened by the form of a sickle.

In the front of the gallery space is a urethane cast of the artist’s suit and gloves laid before a looping snakeskin. The space is divided by two pewter lion fountainheads producing a laser threshold. Between each piece these various methods are treated as equal in the service of severing surface from form. The resulting works oscillate between iconoclasm and a sacrificial economy in which the surface becomes both sacred and profane.

Sean Townley (b. 1983) lives and works in Los Angeles.