Sebastian Black

There were six long art students, thin like spaghetti, standing around the nude model [whiskers]. The model posed with her head thrust forward and her fingers locked together behind her back [nose, mouth]. Her stage was a little round platform with a blanket thrown over it [muzzle]. The art students looked up at her and one by one broke their vine charcoal into two pieces [pupils]. They rubbed the black sticks onto pads of newsprint until the shape of the powder that crumbled off resembled the shape of the model. Meanwhile, the teacher sat by the window and fiddled with a paint flecked oval boombox [head]. He carried it around the room like a thurifer, trailing plumes of static. He waved it about, and pushed its antennae this way and that [ears] until, finally, it shouted “Autozone!”, 2018

Oil on linen

152.4 x 114.3cm

About Sebastian Black

Sebastian Black is a painter and sculptor who depicts colourful, fragmented and multi-layered forms that confuse the delineation between abstraction and representation. Black’s paintings are playful, satirising the art world, the stereotypically sombre eye of the critic, and the outlandish speculations made by viewers when trying to determine the meaning of an artwork. An ode to the cubism of the early 20th century, Black’s works are like the Rorschach test; some portray drooping dog’s faces that also appear like female forms if viewed in a different way. Black seeks to unpick and reimagine the notion of abstraction in order to manipulate the viewer’s relationship, both with his works and with their own perceptions. Written by Goldsmiths CCA

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