The Caretaker & Ivan Seal

The Caretaker & Ivan Seal


The Caretaker & Ivan Seal


The Caretaker

Everywhere at the End of an Empty Bliss, 2024, Audio installation, 43min. Commissioned by PODO Museum. © The Caretaker.


Ivan Seal

Eleven works including A.ZCHRL:ONE, 2024, Oil on canvas, 60×55cm. Commissioned by PODO Museum. © Ivan Seal.

 

This collaborative series brings together the music of The Caretaker and the paintings of Ivan Seal in a synesthetic depiction of gradual memory loss and cognitive perception. Everywhere at the End of an Empty Bliss consists of 11 tracks: the nostalgic, wistful melodies of the earlier tracks, from 1 through 8, evolve into variations of increasingly intense roaring and noise, evoking the sensation of memories being jumbled and scattered. The paintings of Seal, meanwhile, in which traditional still-lifes are eventually simplified into unrecognizable forms, also evoke the experience of an Alzheimer’s patient whose memories are fading. Old friends and longtime collaborators, James Leyland Kirby (b. 1974) and Ivan Seal (b. 1974) focus on themes of memory and cognitive loss as the two-person collective “The Caretaker & Ivan Seal.”