Date and country of birth

1970, IT

About the artist

Born 1970 Catania, Seb Patane lives and works in London. Graduated from BA Fine Art Central St Martins College of Art & Design, London (1999); and MA Fine Art, Goldsmiths University, London (2002).

Patane sees his drawing practice as a collection of sketches made for the hypothetical realisation of bigger pieces, potentially in different media or format. Restriction in space, material and technique sometimes limit his output, so he sees smaller drawings as preparative studies for works which may never happen. Patane is not particularly interested in bringing art which is entirely new into a visually saturated world, so he usually prefers to interact with found, pre-existing pictures, juxtaposing the old with the current, in order to offer alternative takes on already existing imagery.

His works are held in public and private collections including British Museum, London; MoMa, New York; Belvedere Museum, Vienna; Migros Museum, Zürich; and Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo.

Selected solo exhibitions include Vauxhall Ever Green, Hudson Yards, New York (2020); RE-MASTER, Beaconsfield Gallery, London (2017); Vorrei Regnare, Palazzo Vigo, Riposto (2017); Amulet, BOCS, Torino (2017); As Unreal as Everything Else, Museo Civico Castelbuono (2015); Abdomen, Fonti, Naples (2014/2015); The Foreigners Stand Still, Fondazione Giuliani, Rome (2013); Year of The Corn, China Art Objects, Los Angeles (2011); and Entrano il Coro e gli Attori, Galleria Fonti, Naples (2011). Selected group exhibitions include Pushing paper: Contemporary Drawing from 1970 to now, British Museum, London and touring (2019-2020); ME TWO, Opere dalla collezione di Ernesto Esposito, Museo Ettore Fico, Turin (2019); Collection on display: Rituals, Migros Museum, Zurich (2017); The map is more interesting than the territory, Hamburg Kunstverein (2017); Colloquio Mitico, Fonti, Naples (2017); The influence of furniture on love, Wysing Arts Centre, Bourn, Cambridge (2014); Portrait of the artist as a young (wo)man, Castello di Rivoli (2014); Annals of the twenty ninth century, Wysing Arts Centre, Bourn, Cambridge (2014); and Girls Can Tell, GAK, Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst, Bremen (2013).

Awards include Wysing Art Centre, Bourn, Cambridge (2013); Artist in residence, Belvedere and Augarten Contemporary, Vienna (2012); and ACAVA First Base award (2003).