IVAN SEAL - True as applied to you, false as applied to you. / January 29 - March 12, 2011
Opening: January 28, 2011, 6 – 9 pm
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For his first solo exhibition in the Krome Gallery, Ivan Seal selected ten paintings from his studio and sent them to six people working in the field of psychology, psychotherapy and Gestalt therapy with instructions to respond with a sentence, word or set of words. Ten participant reactions were used by the artist as stimulus for a new set of 11 paintings that echo to the originals, starting a game of free correlations and open interpretation.
Ivan Seal’s painting acts as a language, whose code underlies an instrumentalisation. It is what it is, color and brushstrokes. Work.
Seal’s paintings develop a language of signs that performs by representing iconographical scenarios in an endless process-related act. Reduced to essential motifs, the artist signalizes with his manic repeated themes a position that claims the contextualization of the “single picture” and also flips the notion of a “singular” meaning to an image.
The premise for Ivan Seal’s practice is often a word, sentence or an associative game. Paintings frequently begin with the image of a plinth against a dark background. A sculpted form is then placed on this stage, either standing firmly or precariously balanced on thin string. The clay may be treated in various ways, eg. divided by a knife or studded with matches. They seem to be sculptures, that have been abandoned in the middle of the process of their creation. The material presence of the depicted object is manifest, the clay is malleable, the string is often strained, the knife sharp.
This selection is complemented by the spoken word piece „Constructed stream of consciousness - narrative mode using six people in the field of psychology (edit)“ where the responses given by the participants are spoken by Seal and then fed into a computer program which constantly shuffles their order and randomly construct an endless associative stochastic poem. In this way the soundwork comments on a parallel level an open combinatorics, paintings as narration, syntax in space.
The second spoken word piece presented in the exhibition is „Inventory“. It involves the narration by the artist of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2, one of the most frequently used personality tests in mental health consisting of 500 statements, which participants have to answer, “true as applied to you or false as applied to you”. These statements, which play continuously in the gallery space, act as points of reference, stimulation or association in conjunction with the paintings. Although Seal reads each question with the same hypnotic and emotionless voice as in the previous sound piece, his matter-of-fact tone leads ad absurdum to a latent confession. The unsaid responses set the scene for the most intimate free associations.
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Ivan Seal was born in 1973 in Stockport, England and currently lives and works in Berlin. Between 1992-1995 he attended Sheffield Hallam University.
Ivan Seal
where is the axe
2010
oil on canvas
15,7 x 19,7 in / 40 x 50 cm
Exhibition View
Ivan Seal
Charlie Chaplin looking in the mirror
2010
oil on canvas
11,8 x 15,7 in / 30 x 40 cm
Exhibition View
Ivan Seal
an advert for anti-depressants in a doctors magazine
2011
oil on canvas
11,8 x 15,7 in / 30 x 40 cm
Ivan Seal
connection where are you
2011
oil on canvas
11,8 x 15,7 in / 30 x 40 cm
LTR
Exhibition View
Ivan Seal
weight intended as burden
2011
oil on canvas
15,7 x 19,7 in / 40 x 50 cm
Exhibition View
Ivan Seal
green wire
2011
oil on canvas
15,7 x 19,7 in / 40 x 50 cm
Exhibition View
Ivan Seal
is something about to fall
2010
oil on canvas
11,8 x 15,7 in / 30 x 40 cm
Ivan Seal
portrait of Giacometti’s mother
2011
oil on canvas
11,8 x 15,7 in / 30 x 40 cm
Ivan Seal
DNA chain
2010
oil on canvas
11,8 x 15,7 in / 30 x 40 cm
LTR
Exhibition View
Ivan Seal
slide projector
2011
oil on canvas
11,8 x 15,7 in / 30 x 40 cm
Exhibition View
Ivan Seal
constructed stream of consciousness-narrative mode using six in the field of psychology (edit)
2011
digitally manipulated spoken word
Exhibition View
Ivan Seal
keep clear of me
2010
oil on canvas
11,8 x 15,7 in / 30 x 40 cm
Ivan Seal
the Knödel as sundial
2011
oil on canvas
11,8 x 15,7 in / 30 x 40 cm
Ivan Seal
if I were a dwarf, I wouldn’t like to live here
2011
oil on canvas
11,8 x 15,7 in / 30 x 40 cm
Ivan Seal
jewelry shop
2010
oil on canvas
11,8 x 15,7 in / 30 x 40 cm
LTR
Exhibition View
Ivan Seal
a block for beheading
2011
oil on canvas
15,7 x 19,7 in / 40 x 50 cm
Ivan Seal
Analyst couch
2010
oil on canvas
11,8 x 15,7 in / 30 x 40 cm
LTR
Exhibition View
Ivan Seal
happy in spite
2010
oil on canvas
11,8 x 15,7 in / 30 x 40 cm
Ivan Seal
maybe I want to put my hand in it
2011
oil on canvas
11,8 x 15,7 in / 30 x 40 cm
LTR
Exhibition View
Ivan Seal
inventory
record spoken word
2011
Ivan Seal
It’s all fudge to me
2011
oil on canvas
11,8 x 15,7 in / 30 x 40 cm
Exhibition View
Ivan Seal
as if from one hand
2010
oil on canvas
11,8 x 15,7 in / 30 x 40 cm
Exhibition View