Sean Sullivan

Sean Sullivan (b. 1975, Bronx, NY) lives and works in Hudson Valley, NY.

The work of Sean Sullivan deftly plays with paradoxes and limitations. It is bound by a set of very specific procedures and parameters, which allow it to become, paradoxically, limitless. Something between a painting, drawing, monoprint, and a piece of writing, Sullivan’s compact works marvelously resist classification. They consist of oil stick transferred to paper (often found paper from old books and more recently, Japanese printmaking paper). The rather elaborate process is a hybrid sort of drawing and printmaking. Given that the application of his mark making is largely guided by rulers and washers, his technical vocabulary is quite restrained, and yet the resultant images, which range from off-kilter, geometric design-like patterns to architectural interiors and exteriors to more exuberant biomorphic abstractions, are as rich and variegated as his supports are small.

There is an odd, radically meticulous and devotional quality to what he does. It is, at times, redolent of the pictorially dense and mathematical logic of the arabesque, while at other times, it seems to be the byproduct of an almost mystical possession, while still at others, the diagrammatic glossolalia of a splendidly unhinged scholiast. Imagining the production of these pieces, one pictures a figure insistently bent over as if in prayer, or toiling over an illuminated manuscript, or finally, elaborately composing a piece of joyful music– a piece of music for which the instrument has yet to be invented– activities that are probably not so dissimilar to one another in the entrancing and inimitable universe of Sean Sullivan.

“Isthmus in formation,” solo show is currently on view at Linn Lühn, Düsseldorf. Recent solo exhibitions include “Faith in Doubt,” Chris Sharp Gallery, Los Angeles, 2024; and “Excitations (drawings of concern),” Et Al., San Francisco, 2023. Recent group exhibition was “Hudson Valley Artists 2024: Bibliography,” The Dorsky Museum of Art, NY, 2024.