Sean O'Connor. Graven Images

About

Graven Images:
1. any person or thing regarded with blind admiration, adoration, or devotion:
2. a mere image or semblance of something, visible but without substance, as a phantom.

For his first solo exhibition, Sean O'Connor will feature large-scale paintings and works on paper, as well as edition prints that depict vast and intricate floral patterns, dotted with muscular men and athletes, snakes and reptiles, and classical icons of beauty. His work is rooted in traditional decorative art practices such as "Toile de Jouy,” and uses these mediums to portray a contemporary look and examination of idealized male beauty in gay culture. The male imagery in his work references historic and artistic symbols of masculine beauty ranging from ancient Athenian vases, to mid-century male pin ups and athletes, to current prevailing notions of manhood, taking a slight poke at the ‘homo-bromo’ social-media fixated culture. When does appreciation for beauty and aesthetic shift into vanity and narcissism? Do these two polarities work hand-in-hand creating an aesthetic and emotional balance?