Steven Shearer, Canadian Artist Whose Face We Rarely See, Wins $100,000 Audain Prize

This year’s Audain Prize has been won by the famously internet-absent Canadian multidisciplinary artist Steven Shearer.

The $100,000 CAD (£53,600) award—selected by an independent committee, presented by the Audain Art Museum and now in its 23rd year—celebrates outstanding achievement in visual arts in British Columbia, Canada. Previous winners include Dana Claxton, Fred Herzog and Takao Tanabe.

Over a career spanning more than decades, Vancouver-born Shearer has formulated a distinctive artistic practice, collecting and transforming material drawn from sources as varied as heavy metal music, found internet photos, art history and youth subcultures.

Emmy Lee Wall, member of the Audain Prize selection committee, and executive director and chief curator of the Capture Photography Festival, said: “Steven Shearer is internationally renowned for the distinct way in which he weaves together canonical art historical references such as Fauvist or German Romantic paintings with contemporary youth subcultures including heavy metal, punk, and 1970s glam rock.

“His work collapses the traditional hierarchies between ‘high art’ and the vulnerable and aggressive energy of teen rebellion.”

Shearer represented Canada at the 2011 Venice Biennale and has shown at Tate Modern, David Zwirner in New York City and the Art Gallery of Ontario, among other institutions across the world. 

Despite using the internet as a source of inspirational material, until this week Shearer had never allowed photographs of his own face to appear online. Speaking in a video accompanying the prize announcement—in which his face remains covered—the artist said: “I’ve always thought that painting for me was the culmination of everything I do.

“All the other works are not sidetracks, but they are a way of building a world for where maybe the subject matter of the paintings come from, and a source of inspiration.”

The Audain Foundation was established by Canadian housebuilder and philanthropist Michael Audain in 1997 with the objective of fostering greater appreciation of the visual arts in British Columbia and beyond. In 2016, Audain established the Audain Art Museum in Whistler, which focuses on the art of British Columbia.

In 2019, the Foundation introduced the Audain Travel Awards, awarding student artists from British Columbia $7,500 CAD (£4,000) travel grants to pursue art experiences worldwide.