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Lawrence Seward
American, born 1966
CountryHawaii, United States
BiographyLawrence Seward received his MFA from New York University in 1994 and his BFA from the University of Hawaii in 1990. He has exhibited at Andrew Kreps Gallery in New York, Galerie Edward Mitterrand in Geneva, the Chicago Cultural Center, PS1, the Arlington Museum of Art in Texas, and The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu. In 2008, after nearly two decades in New York, he returned to Honolulu, where he now lives and works.In his often poignant and always hilarious paintings and sculptures, Seward explores the foibles and adventures of the ordinary Everyman. Nothing Hear but Fear Itself is part of his most recent body of work, which deals with human feelings, hunger, responses, and desires—and the absurdity of our efforts to mask them. Deceptively crude and deliberately unpolished, Nothing Hear consists of the reverse side of an outsized mask, roughly carved from layers of wood to preserve and bring out its natural imperfections, yet painted to simulate wood grain. Viewed from the back, the mask bears traces of the face it presents to the world: simultaneously angst-ridden and dopey, it is exaggerated to the point of caricature. Indeed, the emotions with which Seward conjures in this work—humor, sadness, skepticism, and wonder—are our own and impossible to hide, for "the back of a mask," he says, "puts us inside and is my attempt at tapping into what is behind our facades we put on daily."
Theresa Papanikolas
Curator of European and American Art (2011)
Person TypeIndividual
