Ben Tolman dans le nouveau Graffiti Art Magazine, n°36 novembre-décembre 2017
Album photo de la 1ère exposition rétrospective de Swoon disponible ici.
La Maison France 5, 20 juillet 2017
https://www.france.tv/france-5/la-maison-france-5/205173-emission-du-jeudi-20-juillet-2017.html
Una nueva ola de artistas jóvenes, urbanos, cosmopolitas ha estado acechando el imaginario mexicano desde hace tiempo. Nombres como Saner, Smithe, Curiot, Jesús Benítez (Dhear), Hilda Palafox (Poni), Pilar Cárdenas (Fusca) y más, ya no son hablar de cualquier artista ni un referente simple y mundano. Ellos, al parecer, desde el arte urbano hasta el lienzo, están llevando la batuta de lo que es hoy en día el arte mexicano.
Inagotable temáticamente, el arte que producen no sólo refiere a una realidad mexicana sino a una universal, contemporánea, que sin dejar sus raíces, porque en efecto, eso es imposible, entabla una conversación de México con el mundo, con el internet, con todos.
“Los hijos del lago perdido” es el acertado nombre de la exhibición colectiva en Galerie LJ en París, Francia, sugerida y curada por Matt Wagner, fundador de Hellion Gallery, que muestra la nueva escena figurativa del arte mexicano. Y el nombre es acertado. Pero no porque haga referencia al perdido lago de Texcoco y los orígenes fundacionales de Tenochtitlán, sino porque, en realidad, todos los mexicanos somos hijos de ese lago perdido. El lago perdido es nuestra relación con lo indígena, nuestro legado mestizo, construimos en los cimientos que ya estaban puestos, pero no olvidemos que nuestro origen no es el mismo que el de aquéllos.
Las obras expuestas, con o sin motivos usualmente referidos al imaginario mexicano, muestran sintomáticamente a través de diversas narrativas llenas de fantasía, simbolismo y surrealismo lo podría significar ser un artista nacido en la tierra del maíz. “Los hijos del lago perdido” se reconectan y al mismo tiempo desconectan de sus puntos de partida, piden tocar temas que están en el radar de todo el mundo, pero al mismo tiempo, demandan hacerlo a nuestra manera. Libres, insumisos, radicales, los hijos del lago se separan del canon, se alejan de lo abstracto, con intensos gestos figurativos presentan una nueva generación de arte mexicano que nace desde y para la gente y las calles.
La exhibición en Galerie LJ se llevó a cabo como el culmen de una investigación por Matt Wunger en su serie de libros titulada Tall Trees of… (Los árboles altos de…), con una ciudad ubicada para cada edición. Habiendo terminado París, Portland y Tokyo, Wunger se dirigió a México con la ambición de reunir artistas, organizar exposiciones y hacer un libro sobre lo que se logre. El resultado aún está por ser visto, sin embargo, la colección de artistas que Wunger logró recopilar y señalar para esta exhibición ya presenta una cara de lo que se puede esperar. Los artistas seleccionados para la exhibición fueron los siguientes: Curiot, Saner, Smithe, Seher One, Violeta Hernández, Jesús Benítez (Dhear), Raúl Urias, María Conejo, Hilda Palafox (Poni), Paola Delfín, Mazatl y Pilar Cárdenas (Fusca).
Las propuestas, estilos y medios que estos mexicanos están llevando a cabo no ponen el nombre de México en alto. No. Si bien, ligadas por nacimiento a una región cultural específica ellas hablan de ese lugar, estas obras y sus exponentes ponen el nombre del arte en alto. Fuera los nacionalismos y enorgullecimientos banales, “los hijos del lago perdido” no le pertenecen a nadie más que así mismos, a su expresión y al éxtasis estético que puede percibir cualquier espectador al ver una de sus obras. Abajo, puedes ver más obras expuestas en “Los hijos del lago perdido”.
Si quieres saber más sobre esta exhibición visita el sitio de Galerie LJ. Para conocer más o comprar uno de los libros de Matt Wunger, haz click aquí.
Mu Pan’s massive painted battle scenes are teeming with both details and satire, humor and an introspective bleakness. The Chinese-American painter, based in Brooklyn, New York, reflects varying periods of art history in each work. And his newer paintings, rendered in acrylic on wood, reflect his fascination with Asian war history, pop culture, dinosaurs, and other topics.
“I love battle scenes; it’s my favorite subject,” the artist said in a past statement. “But it has nothing to do with my military service experience in Taiwan. In fact, I was just a propaganda soldier of the political warfare department—all I did there was poster-making and mural-painting. I couldn’t even dissemble a .57 rifle! Battle scenes excite me, especially the kind with swords and spears and people on horses trying to kill each other. I don’t know why—I just like it—in paintings, in movies. I enjoy producing images like that.”
The series “Dinoassholes” is its own narrative, showing humans and Mesozoic creatures interacting in both peaceful and, in true Pan fashion, a chaotic manner.
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The Contemporary Arts Center of Cincinnati announces Swoon’s early career retrospective for this September :
The CAC is organizing the first major survey of era-defining artist Caledonia Curry – better known as Swoon. Swoon is a pioneering social champion in a field traditionally dominated by men, machismo and activities deemed illegal; she has overcome every barrier to re-define what “street art” means today. This exhibition showcases multiple dimensions of Curry’s multi-faceted practice, including a new site-specific installation, re-stagings of past landmark projects and a survey of her socially-driven work in countries like Haiti and Kenya.
By humble means of drawing, printmaking, wheatpaste and cut paper, Curry has given life to a burgeoning family of faces and figures who take on extraordinary presence when placed in public space. To bring people closer, she explains, “I make [the figures] human-scale and close to the ground, so you have a one-on-one experience. I call them vessels of empathy. ” Curry congregates equally colorful communities of real life characters when collectively building music houses in New Orleans, earthbag community centers in Haiti, and rafts out of NYC garbage that become surreal vessels floating down the Grand Canal in Venice.
To expand the impact of Swoon’s time in Cincinnati, the CAC initiated her participation in the Cincinnati Ballet’s 2017 New Works performance which will take place April 20-30. In collaboration with renowned choreographer Jennifer Archibald, Curry will design a newly created stage set that will subsequently become part of the CAC exhibition.
One of the foremost practitioners of modern street art — a female artist known as “Swoon” — has two upcoming projects in Cincinnati.
PHOTO: HAILEY BOLLINGER
As street art becomes so accepted and popular a genre that its most outstanding practitioners have developed international followings, one of the foremost — a female artist known as “Swoon” — has two upcoming projects in Cincinnati.
The first is a collaboration with choreographer Jennifer Archibald for the Cincinnati Ballet’s The Kaplan New Works Series, which opens Thursday at the Aronoff Center’s Jarson-Kaplan Theater and continues through April 30. All four of the pieces in the program are by women choreographers.
The second project is a major art event — the Contemporary Arts Center says it will open a museum survey of her career to start the upcoming exhibition season. Called SWOON: 2002-2017, it opens Sept. 22 and will be up through Feb. 25, 2018.
Born Caledonia Curry, Swoon began wheatpasting life-size woodblock-printed and hand-painted portraits of friends and family onto walls in New York City in 1999, when she was just a college student studying art at Pratt Institute. Her work quickly gained the attention of pedestrians and gallerists alike.
“First and foremost I am a drawer of portraits,” she says.
Using humble materials, temporary approaches and by “getting up” enough work on the street, by the mid-2000s Swoon was becoming familiar enough that she had already sold pieces to New York’s Museum of Modern Art and had a solo show at Deitch Projects gallery — all this merely a few years out of college.
In addition to more traditional gallery shows, Swoon has also initiated long-term site-specific artistic endeavors in places like Haiti, New Orleans and Braddock, Pa., which use art as a way to galvanize communities.
Like Swoon, choreographer Archibald has worked widely. She’s the founder and artistic director of New York City’s Arch Dance Company, and she’s just been named resident choreographer for Cincinnati Ballet’s upcoming season.
Archibald says via email that she and Swoon met in New York last summer. They’ve been collaborating virtually ever since, sending each other photos and videos and tossing ideas and materials back and forth.
For Archibald’s New Works piece, entitled “Never.Nest,” Swoon repurposed elements from a raft that she floated on the Adriatic Sea. The seaworthy craft was made from discarded furniture and architectural objects that the artist and her crew had gathered from abandoned warehouses and garbage piles along the coast around Slovenia.
The conceptual framework of the collaborative dance piece draws on that. “(It’s about) climate change and coastal cities and our relationship to nature in this moment,” Swoon says. “And (also) our need to viscerally process what’s happening.”
The technical challenges for this particular project are specific to the theater. Grappling with issues of scale, time and mobility requires work.
“It can be fun creative problem-solving,” Swoon says. “Or maddening. Or both.”
“Usually both,” she adds, with a laugh.
The first time Swoon came to Cincinnati was in 2004 for the trendsetting Beautiful Losers: Contemporary Art and Street Culture exhibition at the CAC. Her work was actually exhibited at now-shuttered Publico gallery, one of several satellite locations around the city that hosted the various participating street artists.
It should come as no surprise then that the CAC was interested in bringing Swoon back for a solo show of her work. There is already a committed base of supporters for this kind of art, and what Swoon does with her intricate portraits and installation work is different than other street artists.
The survey of her works that opens in September at the CAC will offer her at chance to reflect on her career. She also has plans to go “off-radar” for at least a year after the survey show. Then, when it comes time to tackle an installation again, Swoon says she will be looking for the next big challenge.
“I kind of know what I’m doing and that’s just not good for an artist,” she says, “or else you’re not living a truly creative life.”
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