Sean Henry, “Sculptures”

Stockholm, 26.9–1.10  2019

Galleri Andersson/Sandström is pleased to present its fifth solo exhibition with British artist Sean Henry. In the exhibition Sculptures Henry is presenting a series of new bronze sculptures and oil pastel drawings.

Sean Henry’s sculptures portray everyday humans, people we pass daily without even noticing or paying attention to. In relaxed poses, immersed in their own thoughts, they express a strong psychological presence. Without narrating a whole story, they awake thoughts regarding our life and existence. Scale is an essential part of Henry’s artistic expression, with works never life-size, always enlarged or slightly reduced in scale. The enlarged sculptures put the viewer at a psychological disadvantage whilst challenging their mutual space. The smaller sculptures invite an adjusted approach that makes us instinctively start a fictional dialogue between the viewer and the sculpture.

Henry has developed a technique for capturing the inner presence of his sculpture. It is one thing to model something – and paint it into life – but it is another thing to imbue in those figures a sense of somebody meditating or thinking about their own existence. They are pensive figures’
– Tom Flynn, Art Historian.

In connection to the celebration of Humlegårdens 400-year anniversary Sean Henrys sculpture Seated Figure will be installed outside of Kungliga Biblioteket. The sculpture, which will be overlooking the park, has also been shown on Oxley Bank at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park UK alongside artworks by artists such as Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore and Jaume Plensa.

Sean Henry was born in 1965 in Woking, Surrey and lives and works in Hampshire, Great Britain. He graduated from Bristol School of Art and Design in 1987. Since then he has had over 30 solo shows and was the first sculptor to receive The Villiers David Prize in 1998. His work is frequently shown in London, New York and Europe. Artworks by Sean Henry are represented in many public and private collections in USA, Norway, Germany, Sweden and Great Britain.

Some of Henrys public artworks include Walking Man in Holland Park, London (2000) and Walking Woman (2013) in Ekebergparken in Oslo, Norway. In 2008 he made Couple, a 13-meter-high and 20-meter-wide sculpture located in the sea off the coast of Northumberland, UK, followed by Standing Man in Stockholm in 2010. Career highlights include Conflux – a solo show of sculpture held in and around Salisbury Cathedral, Wiltshire, in 2011, and his portrait sculpture of Sir Tim Berners Lee, the founder of World Wide Web, commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery in London in 2015.