I’ve never had insomnia, but Steven Shearer’s paintings are a good indication of what it must feel like. Red-eyed, his protagonists stare pleadingly out at the viewer or hide from their gaze under veils of lank hair, shoulders hunched, cigarette in mouth. Rendered with luminous blue-, yellow- and green-tinged skin, these men – visually coded as artist and musician types through their personal style and twilight activities – are clearly in need of some quality shut-eye.
Curated by Dieter Roelstraete in collaboration with the artist and Skarlet Smatana, ‘Sleep, Death’s Own Brother’ brings together works from the holdings of The George Economou Collection under the ‘transgressive thematic perspective of the lifeless body’, according to exhibition materials. These include several oil paintings for which the Vancouver-based artist is best known, such as the magnificent Working from Life (2018), which shows a cadaverous young painter at an easel. Rendered yet more sickly looking by the heavy weave of the linen canvas – which lends his face and hands a prickly, rash-like texture – he nevertheless retains the foppish elegance shared by all of Shearer’s sitters.