Ivan Seal

Maybe it’s a truism of all artists to say that they create their own worlds. In the case of Ivan Seal this idea seems particularly apposite in that his paintings of almost familiar and yet quite strange forms are entirely improvised without recourse to existing objects or photographs.

Hung in groupings and pairings might suggest they have been created in series, though they are made independently of each other, but it is later that the similarities and connections emerge. The titles are selected from a long list of words created by a computer random word generator, and are chosen for their aptness.

Ivan Seal (b. 1973, Stockport, England) graduated from the Sheffield Hallam University in 1995. He lives and works in Berlin, Germany and this is his first solo exhibition in London. Recent exhibitions include I Learn By Osmosis, CEAAC, Strasbourg (curated by Bettina Klein); True As Applied To You, False As Applied To You, Krome Gallery, Berlin, Postface, Essays and Observations, Berlin; Hauntology, Berkeley Art Museum, USA; Novembro Arte Contemporanea, Sao Paulo; Two Rooms For A Fall, West Germany, Berlin (curated by Meike Jansen and Ingo Gerken); You Talk Too Much, Visite Ma Tente, Berlin.