Biography

Sean Norvet is that rare — I would have said impossible — thing: a contemporary artist who seems to draw equally on Renaissance proto-surrealist Giuseppe Arcimboldo (he of the beautiful, horrific plant-people), on the exuberantly ribald cartoons of Robert Crumb and on the happy-go-lucky, barely cohesive LA of The Big Lebowski. His paintings are usually precisely executed in oils on panels, but his style and subjects reflect the media-saturated, commercialized environment we inhabit today. His work is often deconstructive and simultaneously jarring, intense, hilarious and disturbing. His work is sometimes explosive, sometimes still, and often mashes up elegant photo-realism with two-dimensional cartoon buffoonery. His three-dimensional sculptural installations, usually involving food, offer a satiric, ephemeral cheapness in which the medium is the message. As urgent and commanding as his images are, he playfully invites viewers in to share the laugh; he doesn’t preach.