From 5th June, David Zwirner’s London gallery will present a new exhibition by Canadian artist Steven Shearer, featuring figurative oil paintings alongside key loans, drawings, and selected sculptural and assemblage works.

The show continues Shearer’s long-standing investigation into the tension between art history and contemporary visual culture. Working across media, he draws on canonical motifs, most notably the artists in the studio, reframing them through a distinctly modern sensibility shaped by subcultural imagery.

Rather than treating these references as purely historical, Shearer reactivates them within a present-day visual language, where mood, and psychological distance become central. His fascinating figures often appear suspended between presence and withdrawal, reinforcing a sense of introspective ambiguity that has become a defining feature of his practice.

This presentation also marks Shearer’s first solo exhibition in London since 2007, positioning it as a significant return to a city that has played a key role in his international visibility. It follows Sleep, Death’s Own Brother at the George Economou Collection in Athens (2023) and Profaned Travelers at David Zwirner New York (2024), extending a recent sequence of exhibitions that deepen his engagement with narrative fragmentation and historical citation.