STEVEN SHEARER

Early Years

Born in New Westminster, British Columbia, in 1968, Steven Shearer continues to live and work in Vancouver. He studied at Emily Carr University of Art + Design, where he first developed his layered approach to image-making, often collaging and recontextualising found materials.

Much of Shearer’s formative interest in visual culture stemmed from a suburban adolescence shaped by heavy metal music, photocopied zines, and outsider art. His early immersion in alternative media laid the groundwork for his practice, which interweaves past and present through a distinctly personal archive.

Artworks

Steven Shearer’s artworks often centre on themes of youth, alienation, fandom, and mortality, rendered through painting, sculpture, drawing, photography, and digital collage.

Paintings and Portraiture

A cornerstone of Shearer’s artistic practice lies in his portraits: stylised depictions of androgynous young men inspired by Romanticism, Symbolism, and early Modernist painting. These figures are often sourced from vintage photographs, fan ephemera, or entirely imagined, yet they appear hauntingly familiar. Long hair, slouched postures, and inward gazes are recurring motifs, evoking both vulnerability and defiance.

Works such as Synthist (2005) and Poem for an Iron Age (2011) demonstrate Shearer’s adept handling of oil paint—subtle flesh tones, burnished metallics, and darkened backdrops give his subjects an air of solemnity. These paintings resist classification as either traditional or contemporary; instead, they create a liminal space where modern youth become avatars of existential yearning. The artist’s figures have been compared to Pre-Raphaelite muses, yet rendered through the lens of grunge-era aesthetics.

In later series such as The Evening Redness in the West (2021), Shearer deepens his engagement with allegory. Figures dissolve into painterly abstraction, their gestures and clothing becoming expressive fields of colour. These newer works continue his exploration of masculinity and art historical lineage, while also foregrounding the act of painting itself.

Archive and Text Works

Alongside his figurative paintings, Shearer has produced a vast body of work derived from a personal digital archive that spans decades. He has collected thousands of images from obscure fan sites, early internet forums, YouTube thumbnails, and heavy metal fanzines. These vernacular photographs—often band portraits or self-shot images of teenage musicians—form the basis of Shearer’s monumental collages and typographic works. Sleep II (2006), for example, is a towering wall work composed entirely of metal song titles referencing sleep and unconsciousness. The result is a text-based artwork that functions like a concrete poem, simultaneously lyrical and ominous. By aggregating this language, Shearer reveals the pathos and absurdity embedded in subcultural expressions of despair.

Installations and Venice Biennale

At the 54th Venice Biennale in 2011, Shearer represented Canada with Exhaustion—an immersive installation exploring fatigue, adolescence, and artistic struggle. Its centrepiece was a monumental triptych of a reclining male figure, painted in dense, expressive strokes. The pavilion was reconfigured to evoke a cryptic interior, filled with subdued lighting, dark wood panels, and Shearer’s archive-based prints. This theatrical mise-en-scène fused high Romanticism with the grit of grunge, casting his marginal subjects in near-sacred terms. Exhaustion epitomised Shearer’s ability to reframe cultural detritus as sites of beauty and reflection.

Exhibitions

Steven Shearer has been the subject of both solo exhibition and group exhibitions at important institutions. A selection of important exhibitions are provided below.

Solo Exhibitions

• Spotlight: Steven Shearer, FLAG Art Foundation, New York (2024)
• Steven Shearer: Sleep, Death’s Own Brother, The George Economou Collection, Athens (2023)
• Steven Shearer, Brant Foundation Art Study Center, Greenwich, Connecticut (2016)
• Steven Shearer: Exhume to Consume, 54th International Art Exhibition, Venice Biennale, Canada Pavilion, Venice (2011)
• Double Album. Daniel Guzmán and Steven Shearer, New Museum, New York. Travelled to: MUCA, University Museum of Arts and Sciences, Mexico City (2008) [two-person exhibition]

Group Exhibitions

• Day for Night: New American Realism, Palazzo Barberini, Rome (2024)
• Dark Light: Realism in the Age of Post-Truths, Aïshti Foundation, Beirut (2022)
• Canadian Biennial, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (2017)
• Freux Follets, BBB Centre d’Art, Toulouse (2016)
• 1 + 1 = 1: When Collections Collide, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in collaboration with Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Montreal (2014)

Critical Reception

Steven Shearer’s practice has been discussed in publications including Frieze, Ocula, and The Art Newspaper. In a 2013 feature for Ocula Magazine, curator Dieter Roelstraete wrote, ‘He is one of the most accomplished and imaginative artists working in the field of figurative painting at present, and some of the topics that his work touches upon, such as the aesthetics of androgyny and the conundrum of privacy in our scopophilic [or voyeuristic] world, are at the heart of current cultural debates.’

Steven Shearer FAQs

Ocula | 2025