Storm sequence

Shaun Gladwell

With a particular focus on exploring the relationship between individuals and their environment, Shaun Gladwell’s video art features a variety of people partaking in highly disciplined but expressive activities, ranging from skateboarding and BMX riding to surfing or breakdancing. Gladwell uses his interest in contemporary movement cultures to explore ideas about the body in space. Using cinematic devices such as extreme slow motion and long pans, the artist produces “performative landscapes” that distort the sense of time, space, and movement. Both rhythmic and lyrical, Gladwell’s video works offer profound meditations on the nature of creativity and freedom. Those themes likewise appear in other media forms, from painting and photography to performance and installation. The photograph Maddestmaximusatsea (2020) wholly embraces the contradiction of performative personalities with their environment by positioning a flamethrower in deep water, juxtaposing the figure at the heart of the image with his surroundings.