Sean Sullivan at Chris Sharp Gallery

Artist: Sean Sullivan

Exhibition title: Faith in Doubt

Venue: Chris Sharp Gallery, Los Angeles, US

Date: December 2, 2023 – January 20, 2024

Photography: ©Ruben Diaz / all images courtesy of the artist and Chris Sharp Gallery, Los Angeles

Chris Sharp Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition of the Hudson Valley based artist, Sean Sullivan.

The work of Sean Sullivan deftly plays with paradoxes and limitations. It is bound by a set of very specific procedures and parameters, which allow it to become, paradoxically, limitless. Something between a painting, drawing, monoprint, and a piece of writing, Sullivan’s compact works marvelously resist classification. They consist of oil stick transferred to paper (often found paper from old books and more recently, Japanese print making paper). The rather elaborate process is a hybrid sort of drawing and printmaking. Given that the application of his mark making is largely guided by rulers and washers, his technical vocabulary is quite restrained, and yet the resultant images, which range from off-kilter, geometric design-like patterns to architectural interiors and exteriors to more exuberant biomorphic abstractions, are as rich and variegated as his supports are small.
There is an odd, radically meticulous and devotional quality to what he does. It is, at times, redolent of the pictorially dense and mathematical logic of the arabesque, while at other times, it seems to be the byproduct of an almost mystical possession, while still at others, the diagrammatic glossolalia of a splendidly unhinged scholiast. Imagining the production of these pieces, one pictures a figure insistently bent over as if in prayer, or toiling over an illuminated manuscript, or finally, elaborately composing a piece of joyful music– a piece of music for which the instrument has yet to be invented– activities that are probably not so dissimilar to one another in the entrancing and inimitable universe of Sean Sullivan.

Sean Sullivan (b. 1975, Bronx, NY, lives and works in the Hudson Valley, NY.)

A selection of recent one and two person exhibitions includes: (2023) Excitations (drawings of concern) Et Al., San Francisco; (2021) Chris Sharp Gallery, Los Angeles; 2021 New Mnemonics – Gallery Fifty One / Fifty One Too, Antwerp, Belgium; (2020) Feuilleton, Los Angeles; (2019) BDDW Annex Gallery, New York, NY; (2018) String Figures, with Christoph Schellberg, A collaboration between Markus Luttgen Gallery and Linn Luhn Gallery, Dusseldorf, Germany; (2018) à ùne éa, Jack Hanley Gallery, New York, NY; (2017) WEST / END / BLUES, 57w57Arts, New York, NY; (2017) Ubbe & Sacco – 510 Warren Street Gallery, Hudson, NY; (2017) Sunset, Saudade Station, Devening Projects + Editions, Chicago, IL. A selection of recent group exhibitions includes: (2021) Feeling are Facts – Poker Flats – Williamstown, MA; Hudson House, Hudson, NY; (2020) Three Painters – The Arts Center at Duck Creek – East Hampton, NY – Curated by Hiroyuki Hamada; (2019) Sun is Setting / Faith in Strangers, Devening Projects, *Curator; (2018) Museum for Drawing, Ute Parduhn Gallery, Dusseldorf, Germany; (2017) Mon Oncle, Museum for Drawing, Hunningen, Belgium; (2017) We’ll turn Manhattan into an island of joy, Markus Luttgen Gallery, Cologne, Germany.

Sean Sullivan, Faith in Doubt, 2023, exhibition view, Chris Sharp Gallery, Los Angeles

Sean Sullivan, Memory Machine, 2023. Oil stick on Kitikata paper, 8.5 x 10.25 in (20.95 x 26.035 cm)

Sean Sullivan, The Schismatics, 2023. Oil stick on Kitikata paper, 8 x 10 in (20.32 x 25.4 cm)

Sean Sullivan, Beads (for Kitty), 2023. Oil stick on Kitikata paper, 8.25 x 10.25 in (20.95 x 26.035 cm)

Sean Sullivan, A car passes in the night, 2023. Oil stick on Kitikata paper, 8.25 x 10.25 in (20.95 x 26.035 cm)

Sean Sullivan, Origins, 2023. Oil stick on Kitikata paper, 10.25 x 8.25 in (20.95 x 26.035 cm)

Sean Sullivan, Eye of Order, 2023. Oil stick on Kitikata paper, 10.25 x 8.25 in (20.95 x 26.035 cm)

Sean Sullivan, The Proposition, 2022. Oil stick on Kitikata and newsprint paper, brass rivets, 12 x 9 in (30.48 x 22.86 cm)

Sean Sullivan, Doubt About, 2023. Oil stick on Newsprint, 9 x 12 in (22.86 x 30.48 cm)

Sean Sullivan, Abacus for remuneration (debts, sufferings, trespasses, forgiveness), 2023. Oil stick on Kitikata paper, 8.25 x 10.25 in (20.95 x 26.035 cm)

Sean Sullivan, You and I, 2023. Oil stick on Kitikata paper, 8.25 x 10.25 in (20.95 x 26.035 cm)

Sean Sullivan, If, but what if; as opposed to if and only if, 2022. Oil stick, brass rivets on Kitikata and newsprint paper, 9 x 12 in (22.86 x 30.48 cm)

Sean Sullivan, Blue Eyes (for Piet), 2023. Oil stick on Kitikata paper, 8.25 x 10.25 in (20.95 x 26.035 cm)

Sean Sullivan, A day ends, 2023. Oil stick on Kitikata paper, 8.25 x 10.25 in (20.95 x 26.035 cm)

Sean Sullivan, Ex-Voto, 2023. Oil stick on Kitikata paper, 8.25 x 10.25 in (20.95 x 26.035 cm)

Sean Sullivan, St.Rose of Lima, 2023. Oil stick on Kitikata paper, 8.25 x 10.25 in (20.95 x 26.035 cm)

Sean Sullivan, Two Thieves, 2023. Oil stick on Newsprint, 9 x 11 in (22.86 x 27.94 cm)

Sean Sullivan, Foundations, 2022. Oil stick on Kitikata paper, 17 x 20.5 in (43.18 x 52.07 cm)