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IVAN SEAL 

Ivan Seal (b. 1973, Stockport, United Kingdom) is a painter and sound artist based in Berlin. His practice explores the excavation of memory and imagination, translating internal experience into painting and sound. In his paintings, Seal creates imagined interiors, still lifes, and abstract tableaux that emerge from recollection and affect rather than direct observation. These works are intimately linked to his explorations of sound. Seal’s paintings are characterised by rich impasto surfaces and a play between construction and dissolution. Forms hover at the edge of recognition, frequently set against dark, indeterminate grounds where they drift, distort, and re-materialise. In parallel with his visual work, Seal produces sound-based projects that engage with computer-generated language and sonic atmospheres, extending his investigation into memory, fragmentation, and the uncanny. Ivan Seal is well-known for creating the album covers for The Caretaker’s oeuvre which explores cultural time, memory and its loss in the social context of Alzheimer's syndrome and dementia. Presentations of this work in sound and image have ranged from the Barbican in London, to Lincoln Center in New York and in Seoul, South Korea at the Podo Museum.

Solo exhibitions include Mondee Oobe Boathe, Passage, Berlin (2026); Grottoesque, Alma Pearl, London (2025); against the day after before, The Hole, New York (2024); Today Rots Through Tomorrow, Richard Heller Gallery, Los Angeles (2022); IVAN SEAL + THE CARETAKER: everywhere, an empty bliss, FRAC Auvergne, Clermont-Ferrand, France (2019); and In Here Stands It, Spike Island, Bristol (2012). Group exhibitions include Luce, Villa Arconati / Fondazione Augusto Rancilio, Milan (curated by Diana Segantini) (2026); Polyphonic Views, Funkhaus Berlin, Berlin, Germany (2025); Perhaps Sunny Days, PODO Museum, Seogwipo, South Korea (2024); Polireality, Hive Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, China (2023); Positions, Alma Pearl, London (2023); Three Rooms, Carl Freedman Gallery, Margate, UK (2021); and Background/Foreground, Galerie Nordenhake, Stockholm, Sweden (2016).  

Ivan Seal’s work is held in notable collections including: FRAC Auvergne, Clermont-Ferrand, France; Government Art Collection, London, UK; Kistefos Museum, Jevnaker, Norway; Musées de Montbéliard, France; Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery, Norwich, UK; PODO Museum, Seogwipo, South Korea; and the UBS Art Collection, London, UK, among others.

Your Guests Never Mention Me, a solo exhibition by Ivan Seal, will open in Blackpool in June 2026. 

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