Steven Shearer

Canadian artist Steven Shearer (b. 1968) has developed a painting practice that weds canonical art history to the contemporary moment, specifically its more plebeian or subterranean expressions. His work, which also includes drawing, assemblage, sculpture, and installation, deploys a wide range of references as well as a vast archive of historical and contemporary found images.

Shearer was born in New Westminster, Canada, and earned his BFA in 1992 from the Emily Carr University of Art & Design in Vancouver, where he continues to live and work.

The artist’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at prominent institutions worldwide. A solo presentation of Shearer’s work, Sleep, Death’s Own Brother, was on view at The George Economou Collection, Athens, in 2024. The exhibition coincided with the release of a major monograph on the artist’s work, Steven Shearer: Working from Life, which was published by DCV with an essay by Dieter Roelstraete.

In 2016, the Brant Foundation Art Study Center in Greenwich, Connecticut, hosted a retrospective that included paintings, drawings, collages, and poems by the artist. A comprehensive monograph, which includes an interview with the artist by author Jim Lewis, accompanied the exhibition.

In 2011, Shearer represented Canada at the 54th Venice Biennale with the exhibition Exhume to Consume, the title of which was taken from the 1989 song by British metal band Carcass. The presentation included a mural-sized work from his Poems series set upon a multi-story façade that fully obscured the Canadian Pavilion.

Double Album: Daniel Guzmán and Steven Shearer, a two-person exhibition, was on view at the New Museum, New York, in 2008, before traveling to MUCA Gallery at the University Museum of Arts and Sciences, Mexico City. Earlier solo presentations of Shearer’s work were held at the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto (2007); Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, United Kingdom (2007); and the Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver (2004).

In 2024, a solo presentation of the artist’s work, Profaned Travelers, was held at David Zwirner, New York, marking his first exhibition with the gallery.

Shearer’s work is included in prominent museum and public collections worldwide, among them the Kunsthaus Zürich; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; M HKA – Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen, Antwerp; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Montreal Museum of Fine Arts; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Rubell Museum, Miami; and the Vancouver Art Gallery.