Liberalism

Sean Crossley's exhibition "Liberalism" at Harlan Levey Projects explores the multifaceted meanings of the word "liberal" and its connection to the evolution and current crisis of contemporary painting. The exhibition features a new series of large-scale paintings, each composed from the visual identities of four liberal political parties from different countries. Symbols, colours, and slogans are overlapped and arranged without favouring any specific political stance, creating hybrid forms that lack a fixed orientation and can be interpreted from multiple viewpoints.

These works function as "world paintings," holding competing signs in tension rather than resolving them into a singular message. The compositional challenge of the square format, with its focus on the centre, is presented as a parallel to the perceived crisis in contemporary liberal politics. The exhibition ultimately uses painting as a site to examine plurality, contradiction, and unresolved thought, suggesting that freedom can be found in ambiguity and the space between meanings, rather than in certainty.