About

Chinatown-based painter Kan Seidel (b. 1987, Omaha, NE) moved to New York City after attending the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and began working as a writer and LGBT activist in Lower Manhattan in early 2015. He painted recreationally in the ensuing years working in oil paint and gouache. Often portraying distorted figures tumbling through surreal domestic spaces, he subverts his midwestern upbringing through the lens of New York's perversion and subversion; finding fascination in the repressed urges, social conformity and politeness of the Midwestern character in contrast to the overindulgence and amorality of big-city queer culture. After the passing of a sibling in 2021, the artist began to fully immerse himself in painting, feverishly exploding psychology and temporality with figures becoming more and more stretched and distorted in time and space. In these works there is a prominent focus on the concept of the home and the family; the works riding a line between comedy and tragedy. Seidel has also brought his quirky figures into the third dimension as ceramics in a continued exploration of bodies in space. Themes of social critique and satire are present thoughout his various bodies of work, oscillating between monstrous obscenity, lighthearted humor and earnest explorations of grief. 

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