Shawn Powell
(St. Clair, Missouri, 1978 - )
Growing up in rural Missouri in the 1980s and early ‘90s, Shawn Powell’s exposure to art was limited. His first visit to an art museum—the St. Louis Art Museum—was quite formative but only took place when he was near the end of his teenage years, taking community college classes. As a result, his early influences came from mainstream elements of visual culture, including video games, cassette and CD covers, movies, television, comics, and Magic the Gathering trading cards. In his twenties he also learned how to use an airbrush and traveled around the world painting immersive spaces for a company that decorated theme park rides, haunted houses, and laser tag arenas. Though went on to formally study fine art at the Kansas City Art Institute (BFA in Painting and Art History, 2005) and Hunter College (MFA in Painting, 2008), Powell suspects that his ongoing commitment to everyday items stems from this upbringing.[1]
Many of Powell’s works oscillate between abstraction and representation in an amalgamation of these two often divergent approaches to painting. The size and shape of his canvases often take on the size and shape inherent in his subjects: towels, umbrellas, beach balls, and life preservers all seen from a top-down, cinematic viewpoint. Combining low brow, kitschy subjects with a rigorously intentional approach, the paintings are humorously deadpan, wry, strange, and awkward, landing as anthropological and art historical still lifes.[2]
Powell is currently an Associate Professor in Painting and the Graduate Coordinator of the School of Art at Kent State University. He is a 2021 recipient of the Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award Grant. The artist has presented solo exhibitions at The Journal Gallery, New York, NY; 106 Green, Brooklyn, NY; Chapter, New York, NY; and at Abattoir Gallery, Cleveland, OH. He has been included in group exhibitions at The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia, PA; Marrow Gallery, San Francisco, CA; La Esquina, Kansas City, MO; NADA New York, NY; and NADA Miami, among many others. His work has been featured online in Vanity Fair, Juxtapoz Magazine, Brooklyn Magazine, Bedford and Bowery, Cleveland Scene, Art F City, Hyperallergic, and Forma as well as in the print publications CAN Journal, ArtMaze Mag, and Wassaic Projects’ Secret of the Friendly Woods. He and his partner, curator Annie Wischmeyer, operate the project space Gazebo Gallery in Kent, Ohio, which was featured in New Art Examiner. He has curated two exhibitions at Abattoir Gallery that investigate contemporary abstract painting: The Dead Don’t Die (Alvaro Barrington, Theresa Daddezio, Vaughn Davis, Jr., Olivia Drusin, Alteronce Gumby, Ravi Jackson, Lumin Wakoa, and Willa Wasserman) and Near Zero (Peter Demos and Russell Maltz). In the summer of 2022, he participated in the residency and exhibition nido in Monte Castello di Vibio, Italy organized by Michelle Grabner and Brad Killam.[3]
[1] Juxtapoz Magazine, “For Those Who Can Do AND Teach: Shawn Powell Talks Painting,” 1 April 2019, https://www.juxtapoz.com/news/painting/for-those-who-can-do-and-teach-shawn-powell-talks-painting/.
[2] Marrow Gallery, “Tondo,” exhibition press release, 2022, https://www.marrowgallery.com/new-index#/tondo.
[3] Shawn Powell, “Bio,” http://www.shawnkpowell.com/contactbio.
View objects by this artist.