Sean Crossley

Sean Crossley (b. 1987) lives and works in Brussels, Belgium.

Crossley uses painting as a practical means to explore different relationships between abstraction and realism, both of painting as an artistic discipline and within a broader social field. As such, it is concerned with the intrinsic workings of paintings within their own historical continuum, as well as the way they operate as (conceptual) objects embedded in an overarching visual culture. Crossley’s approach to painting is that of a system of exchange offering a reflexive, non-literal way to navigate the visual complexity of the information age. Like a feedback loop, subjects which are often quotidian or conventional, such as faces, objects, or public spaces, are gradually weaved into or fused with other matters or systems. Tangible on the surface of the painting, where the pentimento reveals haphazard connections between different subject matters and compositions, this way of working also reveals itself in the ongoing dialogue which gradually develops between the different bodies of works.

Crossley's work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the WIELS Contemporary Art Centre (Brussels, BE), the Orpheus Institute (Ghent, BE), Campus Biotech (Geneva, CH), Harlan Levey Projects (Brussels, BE), and FUTURES Gallery (Melbourne, AU). His work has been featured in group exhibitions at Flux Laboratory (Geneva, CH), Emergent (Veurne, BE), and nGbK (Berlin, DE), along with many others. He participated in the residency programme of the WIELS Contemporary Art Centre in 2019, the Embassy of Foreign Artists - EOFA (Geneva, CH) in 2021, and Cité Internationale des Arts (Paris, FR) in 2025. His first artist book, Excess/Support, was published by MER. Books in 2024.