STEVEN SHEARER

Vancouver's Steven Shearer is well-known for his works dealing with the cultures of, and links between, youth, Heavy Metal, and the avant-garde. His sculptures, prints, collages, paintings and drawings approach class, gender, and alienation with a keen sense of absurdity that is rarely applied to such subjects. Focusing on recent works, this major survey includes key pieces from the past decade.

All Shearer's works derive from material that he collects in his extensive image bank or 'archive'. Comprising some 36,000 JPEGs, clippings, Xeroxes, reproductions, and found snapshots, the archive falls into eccentric categories—from 1970s teen idols, to Black/Death Metal bands, to children's play structures. As he recycles these images, Shearer applies a form of visual rhyming and punning. Teasing out formal associations among pictures within themes, he reveals unexpected, frequently hilarious, affinities. In the inkjet print Metal Archive Study (2000), his first piece derived from the Internet, Shearer grids hundreds of JPEG's of Black Sabbath merchandise on eBay. Traces of an unmade bed or carpet samples at the edge of the print hint at these images' working class domestic origins. Regarding Black Sabbath paraphernalia as a form of proletarian folk art, Shearer appreciates the "aesthetically fugitive quality" of such amateur documentation.

Confusing the autobiographical and the anthropological, Shearer sometimes includes images of himself in his work. Boy's Life (2004), a collage that evokes the bedroom wall of a 1970s metal-head, features a snapshot of the teenage artist in KISS make-up and regalia. This personal touch highlights Shearer's strong identification with his subject matter. His work often performs the tension between youthful rebellion and the social forces that constrain it. Drawn to scrappily resistant forms of expression, Shearer celebrates the anger, aggression and creativity that bubble beneath the surface of polite society. Like other Vancouver artists before him, he revels in the detritus of everyday life, associating discarded objects and degraded media with social outsiders. His mural, billboard, and poster poems inspired by scatological and blasphemous Heavy Metal lyrics and song titles present visions of the nihilistic sublime that would be disturbing if they weren't so entertainingly hyperbolic.

Shearer's roots in figuration come out in this exhibition's numerous portraits. These vivid oils and ballpoint pen drawings of androgynous long-haired men reference Symbolist and Fauvist art as well as 17th century realism. Teasing out art historical resonances within contemporary social realities, they exemplify Shearer's statement: "I am interested in the times I'm living in and in the way the past echoes in them."

STEVEN SHEARER is a collaboration between The Power Plant and the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, UK and is generously supported by the Department for Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) with the assistance of the Canadian High Commission in London.

A fully-illustrated catalogue, designed in close collaboration with the artist, accompanies the exhibition. The first major publication devoted to Shearer's work, the catalogue includes essays by Nancy Tousley, Nigel Prince, and Helena Reckitt, and an introduction by Gregory Burke, Director of The Power Plant, and Jonathan Watkins, Director of The Ikon.

The Steven Shearer exhibition is presented in Canada with the support of ROGERS.