Stephen J. Shanabrook (born 1965 in

Cleveland Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...

, United States) is an American

conceptual artist Conceptual art, also referred to as conceptualism, is art in which the concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work take precedence over traditional Aesthetics, aesthetic, technical, and material concerns. Some works of conceptual art, sometimes ca ...

, who lives and works in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

and

Moscow Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 millio ...

, Russia. He graduated from Syracuse University, The Skowhegan School of Art program, USA and de Ateliers, The Netherlands.

Concept and Work

Shanabrook began making special kinds of chocolate pralinés from casts of wounds on dead bodies from morgues in Russia and North America in 1995. Son of an obstetrician and the town coroner, as a child Shanabrook worked at a chocolate factory in a small town in Ohio. Overlapping these oppositional influences the artist created a unique vision of beauty, one on the threshold of death, pain and disaster. Shanabrook gives a new and often disturbing meaning to substances and forms otherwise associated with comfort, happiness and banality. One late 2000s chocolate piece was a life size sculpture of the remnants of an 18-year-old suicide bomber, based on a press photograph. Shanabrook's works are included the collection of David Walsh (art collector), David Walsh, in his Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) in Tasmania, Australia.

Collaborations

Fashion label Comme des Garçons used images of the "Paper Surgery" project by Shanabrook and Veronika Georgieva for their ad campaign Spring/Summer 2010. Shanabrook worked with Veronika Georgieva and the Saatchi and Saatchi advertising agency to create an ad campaign for 25th anniversary of Reporters Without Borders in 2010.

References

External links

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''Villager'' review

Orel Art, Paris/London
{{DEFAULTSORT:Shanabrook, Stephen American conceptual artists Living people 1965 births