1990–1995, Improbable History

Comprehensive monograph

Since the early 1990s, Sean Landers’ work has been one of the most fascinating and repeatedly irritating projects in contemporary art. The polar opposites of tormented self-doubt and endless self-aggrandizement run like a thread through the artist’s practice along with a number of masks of failure used by the subject as a strategy to preserve himself from impending loser status. With text and video works that appear disguised as conceptual art, he introduces into this genre the taboo of the artist as subject, as well as the artist’s emotions. He has become known as the artist who—with confessional and stream-of-consciousness texts and videos—presents himself as a failure in his art, his life and his relationships.

This comprehensive monograph includes almost all of Landers’ early oeuvre, from 1990 to 1995. Published here for the first time, it offers an overview on the text and cartoon works on paper, the first paintings and sculptures, as well as the video and audio works of his beginnings. It thus presents itself as a companion volume to the reference monograph published in 2005 and reprinted in 2008.

Published with the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis and the support of Ringier Collection, Zurich.