Sean Henry

April 29, 2010, New York, NY – Forum Gallery presents Sean Henry, an exhibition of new figurative sculptures from British artist Sean Henry. Inspired by friends and the people he encounters on the streets of London, Henry’s sculptures delve into the mysteries of daily life. Working from life, photographs and his own drawings, Henry creates each sculpture in clay before it is cast in bronze and individually painted by the artist.

Tom Flynn writes: “Underpinning Henry’s work is a restless urge to push boundaries that define the experience of viewing sculpture. Scale remains central to this ongoing investigation, as does his choice of subject. Works such as Papillon and John (Standing) demonstrate his instinct for turning seemingly ordinary human types into sculpted figures of compelling strangeness. Much of the new work also shows him foregrounding his love of painting – always an important part of his work but recently recruited into a more active role in conjuring a sense of psychological intensity. This is most evident in Papillon – three almost identical ceramic portrait heads of an anonymous man, mounted side by side on separate wall panel.”

Papillon and John (Standing) are included in the exhibition, as is the scale model of the artist’s work Folly – a large open-sided pavilion – developed between 2007 and 2009 for the sculpture garden of a new museum in The Netherlands. At full size, the work measures 24 x 18 x 12 feet. The tapering single room that comprises Folly contains painted bronze sculptures of a bed, a desk, two chairs and two versions of the same man, one asleep and one standing. Sunlight shines through a rectangular skylight directly above the bed, sending shafts of light and dark across the rear wall like an over-scaled Venetian blind, marking the passing of time.