Sean Landers (b. 1962, Palmer, MA)

Sean Landers currently lives and works in New York City and Southold, New York. He received his MFA from Yale University School of Art in 1986 and his BFA from Philadelphia College of Art in 1984. Since the early 1990s, he has created a highly conceptual body of work that uses both visual and written language to expose everything from his innermost thoughts to broader truths about the contemporary art world and society at large. More recent work marks a return to painting and sculpture, in which his signature use of text and imagined characters serves as a vehicle for commentary on the ever-changing sociopolitical climate and the state of humanity.

In May 2025, the Newport Art Museum staged Lost at Sea, an exhibition in which Landers’ paintings entered into dialogue with art history through a selection of Winslow Homer’s 19th-century Harper’s Weekly illustrations from the museum’s collection. Anchored by Moby Dick, The Whale (2013/2023), Landers’ monumental 28-foot-long painting of Herman Melville’s legendary creature, the exhibition invited viewers to reflect on ambition, memory, legacy, and loss. In 2023, Landers became the first artist to have a museum-wide exhibition at Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature, where his paintings and sculptures were interwoven with the institution’s permanent collection of taxidermied animals and artistic representations of wildlife. Additional notable solo exhibitions have taken place at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis; Kunsthalle Zürich; Le Consortium; and the Queens Museum. 

Landers has also participated in the Venice Biennale and the Berlin Biennale. Group exhibitions include the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain; Musée Magritte Museum; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; New Museum; Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt; Serpentine Galleries; Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts; Wexner Center for the Arts; and Whitechapel Gallery.

Landers’ work is included in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum; Dallas Museum of Art; Deichtorhallen Hamburg; Fundación Jumex Arte Contemporáneo; Hammer Museum; Hessel Museum of Art; Kistefos Museum; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Modern Art; Tate Modern; Walker Art Center; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, among others. 

www.seanlanders.net