Steve Seeley 'Right Back at It Again'
Vertical Gallery is very proud to present ‘Right Back at It Again,’ a solo showcase for painter and printmaker Steve Seeley.
‘Right Back at It Again,’ on display May 2-31, unpacks the art of making art, drawing on the slapstick surrealism of classic cartoons to affectionately lampoon the day-after-day struggles and sacrifices of a creative life. Vertical toasts the exhibition’s launch with an opening reception Friday, May 2 from 5:00 to 8:00 p.m.
‘Right Back at It Again’ follows just six months after Vertical presented Seeley’s collection ‘They Cometh!’ at Aqua Art Miami 2024 — a quintessential example of the productivity and pace demanded of working artists. Its 27 acrylic paintings depict the beginningless and endless cycle of artistic life, death and rebirth via the hyper-exaggerated visual grammar of Looney Tunes-style mayhem: i.e., heads spontaneously combusting, anvils falling from the sky and all the other stuff that Wile E. Coyote’s nightmares are made of.
“Art is a grind. There are no breaks. I don’t mean that to sound negative. But you have to psych yourself up every day. You fall down or stumble, and you bounce back up and go right back to it,” Seeley says. “That was part of the impetus for the title ‘Right Back at It Again,’ but I’m addressing the subject in cartoon jest. Cartoon characters are indestructible. They can't die. You blow them up, and they reinflate. You can’t escape the dark humor aspect, but there's a light there somewhere.”
While ‘They Cometh!’ paid homage to Seeley’s lifelong idol Jack Kirby, the promethean comic book artist responsible for co-creating Marvel Universe icons like Captain America, the Fantastic Four and the Black Panther, ‘Right Back at It Again’ mostly eschews established pop culture properties in favor of a tabula rasa approach.
“It was a nonlinear process this time around. The first piece I did led to the next piece, and that piece led to the piece after that. I didn't give myself any walls or confines, and I didn't care where I went with it as long as it referenced the piece prior to it,” Seeley explains. “It was really important to me to keep everything optimistic, even though it’s a show about people getting their asses kicked. I just don’t know a better way to depict [the creative process] than to show someone getting knocked down or squashed.”
‘Right Back at It Again’ also blows up and reassembles Seeley’s color palette.
“Color is my favorite part of making art,” he says. “A lot of times in the past, I've mixed 20 or 30 different colors for a show. That's the base. Sometimes I allow myself to use different colors if I need to. I did less of that in this show. One way for me to jump from one piece to the next was to pick a prominent color — a very prominent blue, for example — and then continue that color into the next piece. Also, there is not one ounce of black paint in this entire show. I don't use black. All my line work is what I call ‘suede.’ It’s a brown-ish, violet color. I always like the drab, desaturated colors.”
Seeley is a mainstay of Chicago’s contemporary art community. The Wisconsin native came to the city in 2004 after earning a Master of Fine Arts in printmaking from the Ohio State University, appearing in group shows across the Midwest before headlining his earliest solo exhibitions in partnership with Chicago’s Packer Schopf Gallery. Seeley — a former partner in Windy City printmaking specialists POP!NK Editions — first exhibited at Vertical in 2013 as part of the gallery’s very first holiday group show, ‘Deck the Halls,’ and returned in 2015 for ‘Heroes & Villains.’ He has remained a Vertical fixture in the years since, co-headlining 2023’s duo show ‘Love Notes’ opposite Blake Jones.
