Sean Jena Taal works with graphite drawings that poke at the dichotomy of comfort and discomfort, belief and alienation, seduction and disgust. Aiming to blur lines and create uncertainty, Sean uses visual languages of space, bodies, pareidolia, and the build up of layers to question how subterranean reality exists. Through fictionalized cave spaces, he searches for what’s looking back from the depths and what forms grow and survive in hostile spaces. Generations of calcification and deposits grab onto one another to form communal bodies hidden away in troglophilic worlds. Dripping fingers reach down in birth canals towards erect mounds. Gushing water gurgles and sprinkles falling into pools of soft rock and acid, flowing through hidden landscapes where forms are annihilated and reborn.
Sean holds a BFA in drawing from the Alberta University of the Arts (2015). He has attended the Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design’s New York Studio Residency Program (2012), the Gil Artist Residency in Akureyri, Iceland (2022), and the Banff Centre’s BAiR program (2023).