Ceal Floyer 644, 2025

644 by Ceal Floyer is the final work the artist realized before her death.

The work consists of a stock photograph depicting sheep grazing in a green pasture, each animal marked with a small black number. Modestly scaled and simply framed, 644 exhibits the clean and minimal aesthetic of Floyer's oeuvre.

Typical of Floyer’s practice, 644 combines conceptual rigor with understated humor: an ironic nod to the well-intentioned but usually useless advice to count sheep in order to fall asleep in an insomniac night. The unbothered, systematic branding of sheep – where they become marked first as property and obliterated as sentient beings – is juxtaposed with an the idyllic aesthetic associated with the pastoral.

The work was realized with the help of Thomas Demand who explains, “It’s kind of typical Ceal. There’s something very cold about it, very conceptual and rigid and radical. And there’s also something very funny and warm.”