Sebastian Lloyd Rees

“The archives and echoes of the urban city hold a significant conversation around my paintings, which focus on the ethical values of social criticism, political statement and the scars of the urban world and its inhabitants… in many ways an academic approach to painting. Over the last year, archives have alternated their position within me.

The state of observing and embodying the urban has become less prevalent in my paintings somehow –– there has become more of a shift towards the archive of me embodying and divining the mood of nature and spirit of things.

To me, it's radiated my paintings into a state where it's an attempt to interpret and understand who we are, and how we find each other in our bodies, in each other and the countries and places inhabited. I'd like to think about it as a state where the unconscious can run free, and painting somehow returns to its origins, a place filled with language and a mystery that can only be expressed in abstracted symbols and lyrical images”

Photo: Chris Kontos

About

Sebastian Lloyd Rees (b. 1986, Stavanger, Norway) is based between Athens and London. Lloyd Rees studied at Goldsmiths where he received his BA in 2010 and is in an ongoing collaboration with Ali Eisa under the name Lloyd Corporation.

Sebastian Lloyd Rees’s painting became known for his use of found materials from the urban environment in his Hoarding Works (2014–2018); a series of paintings in which the artist repurposed the boards protecting construction sites of London and New York.

After moving to Athens in 2020, Lloyd Rees developed a new visual language in his painting, shifting from literal use of the urban environment to an approach informed by his physical place within the city. Athens, a vastly different city architecturally, provided a new set of compositional devices for Lloyd Rees. Painting acts as a visual diary of the artist’s daily occurrences and interactions, and observing new ways humans inhabit a city has informed the artist’s series of Black Paintings (2021–2023), presented for the first time at Vardaxoglou in 2023.

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Selected Works

Sebastian Lloyd Rees
Songs Without Words, 2021-2023
oil and acrylic on wood
250 x 250 cm
98 3/8 x 98 3/8 ins
Sebastian Lloyd Rees
A Rose in The Spotlight, 2021-2023
oil and acrylic on wood
250 x 250 cm
98 3/8 x 98 3/8 ins
Sebastian Lloyd Rees
In Beauty It Is Finished, 2021-2023
oil and acrylic on wood
250 x 250 cm
98 3/8 x 98 3/8 ins
Sebastian Lloyd Rees
Untitled (For Soriano Nel Cimino), 2022
oil on fabriano paper
39.5 x 47 cm
15 1/2 x 18 1/2 ins
Sebastian Lloyd Rees
Hoarding ( Peckham Rye Lane, 14 August 09:26 GMT - 2014), 2014
industrial paint, pollution, plywood
200 x 520 cm
78 3/4 x 204 3/4 ins
Sebastian Lloyd Rees
Hoarding ( Kings Cross St Pancras 27th September 13:15 GMT - 2014)
industrial paint, pollution, plywood, in 5 parts overall
200 x 700 cm
78 3/4 x 275 5/8 ins
Sebastian Lloyd Rees
Hoarding, (94 North Street, 26th September 20:08 GMT - 2016), 2016
industrial paint, pollution, plywood
200 x 122 cm
78 3/4 x 48 ins
Sebastian Lloyd Rees
Short, medium and long-term” (2010 - 2081), 2016
industrial paint, pollution, plywood
200 x 122 cm
78 3/4 x 48 ins
Sebastian Lloyd Rees
Hoarding, (94 North Street, 26th September 20:08 GMT - 2016 / Nine Elms Lane, 17th September 01:20 GMT - 2016), 2016
industrial paint, pollution, plywood
200 x 157 cm
78 3/4 x 61 3/4 ins
Sebastian Lloyd Rees
Hoarding, (Plumtree Ct, 26th January 12:08 GMT - 2018), 2018
industrial paint, pollution, plywood
200 x 173 cm
78 3/4 x 68 1/8 ins
Sebastian Lloyd Rees
Hoarding, (707 - 701, E 241 ST, Bronx NY 10470, 19th September 13:53 EST, 2018), 2018
industrial paint, pollution, plywood
200 x 173 cm
78 3/4 x 68 1/8 ins