(Providence, Rhode Island, 1965- )
Lives and works in New York City
Sean Mellyn is known for
strange paintings and drawings of children. They are realistic and
bizarre, and have been compared to the sculpture of Robert Gober
for their ability to blend realism and the eerie. The images are
based on photographs of happy, squeaky-clean and wholesome children
found in magazines and scrapbooks from the 1950's. Mellyn often interrupts
the surfaces with shocking protuberances, in this case, a boy sprouting
a pig nose. These interruptions are meant to break the surface of
the painting, in a manner after earlier artists such as Jasper Johns
and Marcel Duchamp, but more importantly they are also designed to
break through the surface of American culture which projects
an identity of perfection and confidence. This work, a self-portrait
as a young boy, is rendered even more ambiguous and indeterminate
through the disagreement of gender in its title. |
