Since the 1990s, New York-based artist Sean Landers’ work has been one of the most captivating enterprises in contemporary art due to its attempts to map the boundaries of human-nature and the self. This exhibition proposes that Landers’ formative body of work, produced from 1991-1994, was one that defined his twenty-year career. The first survey of his early work, 1991-1994, Improbable History presents an overview of the artist’s oeuvre including text works on paper, photographs, paintings, sculptures, and diaristic calendars, with a focus on his performative videos shot in the studio. Across this diverse range of media, Landers explores a holistic set of themes and methodologies, including a sincere and unflinching presentation of the artist’s consciousness. Weaving stream-of-consciousness text or soliloquizing on lo-fi video, Landers presents the artist as an object of study. In this relentless articulation of emotion—from self-loathing, self-doubt, and humiliation, to humility, empathy and true love—Landers explores the process of artistic creation through the invention and simultaneous revelation of the self.

Sean Landers: 1991-1994, Improbable History is organized for the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis by by Paul Ha, Director, with Laura Fried, Assistant Curator. A new catalog, featuring Lander’s early work and new texts, will be produced on the occasion of the exhibition.