Sean Slemon Artist Talk

Join us to hear Sean Slemon talk about his Olson Gallery exhibition, Confluence. A reception with the artist will immediately follow the talk.

This exhibition includes a new large-scale sculptural installation examining the incomprehensible scale of natural resources around us and revisits Slemon’s concern for equitable access to them. Also included is a series of soil drawings from 2012 to the present. New works on paper produced for this show highlight the use of drawing within Slemon’s sculpture practice, revealing the installation and its development.

On View: October 18–December 16, 2017 

About the Artist

Seán Slemon (http://www.seanslemon.com/) obtained an MFA from Pratt Institute in New York and a BFA from Michaelis School of Fine Arts at the University of Cape Town. He has been featured in numerous publications, and completed residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine, Chashama in New York, and Nirox in South Africa. He has been awarded grants from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts in New York and the National Arts Council of South Africa, and he won the 2005 Sasol New Signatures Award for emerging artists in South Africa.

Slemon’s work has been shown in the U.S., Europe, and South Africa. Major site-specific installations include Uplift: The Mountain (2008) at the Palazzo delle Papesse in Siena, and The Light at 7:00 am (2009) for No Longer Empty’s Reflecting Transformation show in Chelsea, NY. Goods for Me (2011) was featured at Art Miami in the THINK BIG! show, curated by LaRete Art Projects in 2013.

In 2014 Slemon completed a commission for First National Bank; a series of five public sculptures for their Johannesburg Bank City precinct. Solid Acacia (2014) was the largest, residing at the bank’s headquarters. Face the Sun (2014), produced in conjunction with Nirox, was featured as part of the Winter Sculpture Fair at Nirox Foundation Sculpture Park in Johannesburg in 2015.

Recent solo exhibitions include Origin Unknown (2015) at MagnanMetz Gallery in New York and Captured (2016) at Mariane Ibrahim Gallery in Seattle. He also exhibits with Everard Read Gallery in Cape Town, South Africa, with whom he produced Fragmented Sapele (2016) for the occasion of the 2016 Cape Town Art Fair.

Confluence (2017) at Bethel University will be his 14th solo presentation.