Michael Dean
Unffffffffffuckingtitled (music playing), 2023
Reinforced concrete and green pigment
65 1/2 x 46 x 13 1/2 inches (166.4 x 116.8 x 34.3 cm.)
Michael Dean
Unfuckingtitled, 2023
Reinforced concrete
62 1/2 x 50 1/2 x 17 1/2 inches (158.8 x 128.3 x 44.5 cm.)
Michael Dean
Unfuckingtitled (music playing), 2023
Reinforced concrete
66 x 44 x 16 1/4 inches (167.6 x 111.8 x 41.3 cm.)
Michael Dean
Unfuckingtitled (fuckin’ starvin’/hungry), 2023
Reinforced concrete and color pigment
65 1/2 x 39 x 27 inches (166.4 x 99.1 x 68.6 cm.)
Michael Dean
(Unfuckingtitled) the bunnies is the music the music is the bunnies and cherries etfuckingcetera, 2023
Reinforced concrete, color pigment, rebar
41 3/8 x 32 1/4 x 4 3/4 inches (105 x 82 x 12 cm.)
Michael Dean
Unfucking Titled Food, 2021
Concrete and steel
67 1/4 x 27 1/2 x 23 inches (170.8 x 69.8 x 58.4 cm.)
Michael Dean
Unfucking Titled Poor, 2021
Concrete and steel
24 1/2 x 67 x 31 1/2 inches (62.2 x 170.2 x 80 cm.)
Michael Dean
Unfucking Titled Near, 2021
Steel, reinforced concrete
69 3/4 x 38 1/4 x 24 1/4 inches (177.2 x 97.2 x 61.6 cm.)
Michael Dean
Unfucking Titled Cope, 2021
Concrete and steel
65 1/8 x 50 x 29 inches (165.4 x 127 x 73.7 cm.)
Michael Dean
Unfuckingtitled (Heres your fucking swings and roundabouts love), 2021
Lipstick, extra virgin olive oil, and cement on paper
33 1/8 x 23 3/8 inches (84.1 x 59.4 cm.)
Michael Dean
Unfuckingtitled (x), 2021
Lipstick, extra virgin olive oil, and cement on paper
33 1/8 x 23 3/8 inches (84.1 x 59.4 cm.)
Michael Dean
don’t relax (Working Title), 2020
Lipstick on paper
framed: 13 1/2 x 18 1/2 inches (34.3 x 47 cm.)
Michael Dean
F yes (Working Title), 2019
Reinforced concrete, pigment, vinyl adhesive, and soft drink can
70 7/8 x 31 1/2 x 19 11/16 in
(180 x 80 x 50 cm)
Michael Dean
Unfucking Titled (B LESS), 2018
Steel, concrete, paperback publications, cable ties, scene tape, wire fencing
71 5/8 x 71 5/8 x 34 1/4 in
(182 x 182 x 87 cm)
Michael Dean
LOLLOLLOL (Working Title), 2018
Concrete, steel reinforcement, plastic, padlocks, bike locks, cable ties, publications, stickers, grass
70 x 65 x 35 3/8 in
(178 x 165 x 90 cm)
Michael Dean was born in 1977 in Newcastle Upon Tyne. He lives and works in London. Dean initiates his artistic process with his personal writings, transforming textual elements into sculptures and immersive installations that delve into themes of language, the body, and intimacy.
This year, a selection of Dean's works are included in 2025 Annual Exhibition, opening on June 28 and on view through October 26, 2025 at The Campus, Hudson, NY. In 2023, Andrew Kreps Gallery presented Four Fucks Sake, Dean's third solo show with the gallery. Previous solo exhibitions include Smittens For Smoticons, Goswell Road, Paris, France (2022), Tendre-Sur-Estime, Yvon Lambert Gallery, Paris, France (2022), Unfuckingtitled at CC Strombeek in Flanders, Belgium (2021), A Thestory of Luneliness for Fuck Sake at Andrew Kreps Gallery in New York (2021), Michael Dean – The End at Converso in Milan, Italy (2020), Tu texto aquí at Museo Tamayo in Mexico City, (2019), Michael Dean: Laughing for Crying at Lismore Castle Arts in Lismore, Ireland (2019), Having you on at BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead (2018), Teaxths and Angeruage at Portikus in Frankfurt, Germany (2017), Sic Glyphs at South London Gallery, London (2016), and Lost True Leaves at Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas (2016).
Dean was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2016 and for the Hepworth Prize in 2018. In 2017, Dean participated at Skulptur Projekt Münster. His works are featured in significant public collections, including Tate, London; Henry Moore Foundation, Hertfordshire; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; S.M.A.K. Gent; Arts Council Collection, London; Kadist Art Foundation, Paris; The Hepworth Wakefield, Wakefield; and Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas.
Barakat Contemporary presents Garden of Delete, the first exhibition of the British sculptor Michael Dean (b. 1977, UK) in Korea.
While the transmutation of language is particularly important to Dean’s practice, his works are not intended to be read as words, but rather to be identified as an element of language in their own form and imagined as a word or idea. He attributes a physical form to a personally developed language, based on a series of typographic alphabets, which he designs himself.
Michael Dean’s immersive sculptural installations begin with his own writing, which he translates into physical form, from letter-like human-scale figures to self-published books deployed as sculptural elements within his installations. His materials are readily available, and include concrete and steel reinforcement bars. For Lismore, Michael has created a new body of work developing on from recent work which examines how our experience of text exists in the realm of the street. Commonplace signs such as hazard and police tape have been replaced by Dean’s own typographies and nonsensical poetic fragments, emptying them of their original meaning. The transformation of written words into a language of concrete objects is characteristic of Dean’s work. Typically beginning with his own writing, he abstracts and deforms these texts into new typographies, subsequently materialized in solid, physical forms.
The Hepworth Prize for Sculpture was established in 2016 as a £30,000 biennial award recognizing a British or UK-based artist of any age, at any stage in their career who has made a significant contribution to the development of contemporary sculpture.
