We are pleased to present a new series of etchings by Sean Pearl, shown by London-based gallery Santi. This presentation marks the first instalment of an ongoing partnership between Minor Attractions and Rise Art.
Last year, Rise Art collaborated with Minor Attractions on an extended online presentation. With curators including Marcelle Joseph and Hector Campbell, we drew together a concise selection of works from its seventy-plus exhibiting galleries, offering context and critical reflection alongside.
That collaboration now extends into something more sustained: a year-round series of focused presentations, each produced with a single gallery. This month, Santi – a new addition to London's scene, just past its first anniversary – presents five new prints by Florida-born, London-based artist Sean Pearl.
Small in scale but dense with symbolism, each etching pulls from the long history of image-making, layering recognisable motifs into a set of restless, charged, and self-aware prints.
Rise Art shines a light on today's most dynamic and culturally significant artists, collaborating directly with a curated roster of emerging, mid-career, and established creatives worldwide.
Santi is a contemporary art gallery founded in 2025 by Santiago Steib. The gallery is based in London on the lower ground floor at 96 Robert Street, NW1 3QP.
Minor Attractions is an annual art fair held during Frieze week at The Mandrake hotel in London. Blending contemporary art with performance and nightlife, the fair has quickly established itself as a catalyst in the city's emerging art scene while carving out a place on the international commercial circuit.
Photography courtesy of Sam Hutchinson
“Sean Pearl’s etchings engage with symbols that predate the artist, drawing on existing imagery and its continued circulation. The works acknowledge a position within this lineage, contributing to the evolving forms that symbols assume through their repeated use and representation by artists.”
– Santiago Steib, Founder of Santi
Sean Pearl was born in 1999 in Boca Raton, Florida, and lives and works in London. He completed his BFA at The Cooper Union School of Art, New York, in 2022 and his MA in Print at the Royal College of Art, London, in 2024. Recent exhibitions include XVI: Rime of the Ancient Mariner's Apartment Complex at RTA Projects, London (2026); Shadwell Biennial with Season 4 Episode 6 and Santi, London (2026); Searchlight Pictures at Centre du Rat, Montreal (2025); and Four Works, Turquoise, New York (2024). Upcoming exhibitions include Model of the Main Room at Santi, Milan (2026) and Homegrown at RTA Projects, London (2026).
view artist profileIncreasingly, it seems as though black and white imagery is hardcore.
There is a prevalence of it on black metal album covers, for instance. It's like putting an iPhone in greyscale mode to deter overstimulation. I decided to pursue making traditional black and white etchings. These works feel prop-like, as if I am roleplaying an etcher. Proliferating work through this historical method implicates me, much like how Mike Kelley once placed pictures of himself in a girl's scrapbook to make it seem as though he were its author.
I'm attracted to this older, canonical method, and its motifs, for how these ancient works, dealing with their own era's memes, seem like sunken ships: a memento mori for today's productions. Take Dürer's Melencolia I, a meme from his own time, possibly a more arcadian and pure piece of media, watching from a distance, as if a joke, at new memes.
In practice, pursuing etching in a contemporary context seems to illuminate a sense of it being religiously corrupt; the piety that emanates from an etching is just a trick. Etching is a medieval and tedious time sink that seems entitled to value in exchange for unnecessarily intense labour.
There is a dialogue that happens when confronted with a work that invites you to be stupid, to let go and experience something cringe, and the disgust that may follow. Drawing as a culmination of life's grog is unexpectedly drowsy, and the dots resulting from moments of clarity can be corny sometimes.
– Sean PearlBeyond the studio
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