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NEWS
SWOON: 2002-2017, first retrospective at CAC Cincinnati in September 2017
The Contemporary Arts Center of Cincinnati announces Swoon’s early career retrospective for this September :
Swoon
September 22, 2017 – February 25, 2018
Organized by the Contemporary Arts Center; Curated by Steven Matijcio
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.
Citybeat announces Swoon’s next major art event : the Contemporary Arts Center of Cincinatti will open a museum survey of her career entitled “SWOON: 2002-2017”, opening Sept. 22 and up through Feb. 25, 2018
One of the foremost practitioners of modern street art — a female artist known as “Swoon” — has two upcoming projects in Cincinnati.
The artist “Swoon” with her set for Cincinnati Ballet’s New WorksPHOTO: 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.”
Recap of Swoon in Hong Kong, in the streets & Art Central, by Brooklyn Street Art
SWOON ON THE STREETS, IN THE FAIRS, AND BEYOND IN HONG KONG
Posted on March 28, 2017
Brooklyn Street Artist Swoon has traveled to hot, hopping Hong Kong recently to create the façade for the tramline with HKwalls, a program of customization for the historic public transportation cars in the city center that has included also Portuguese Street Artist Vhils with HOCA, and during Art Basel this year a site specific tram from Hong Kong artist Kingsley Ng.
Swoon. Hong Kong. March 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Not surprisingly, as is the custom of Street Artists everywhere, the wheat-pasting romantic portraitist introduced a number of her friends to the streets of the Incense Harbor city among its myriad winding cobblestones, wending staircases, and wiley alleyways.
The experience of a local is perhaps to discover this new entity on a wall suddenly, a figure so full of presence and personality as if it may speak to you. As an international traveler the experience may be to be greeted in a foreign land by a friendly familiar face.
Swoon. Detail. Hong Kong. March 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
In our case, that same face greeted us again in the entirely scrubbed austerity of the white cube of a Parisian art dealer, nested as it was among a honeycomb of other white boxed and illuminated beneath a vast white canvas on a pier by the Ferris Wheel.
We meditated lightly on this topic of the gallery on the street – commercial gallery – museum gallery continuum during our Images of the Week wrap up this week. It is an unusual position that Street Artists’ occupy and one that introduces topics around speech, advertising, commercialism, and traditional graffiti practices of getting up and marking one’s name.
Swoon. Hong Kong. March 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
And now we muddy those waters once again, by telling you of a BSA-curated show of new prints that will benefit the Heliotrope Foundation when it debuts next week in New York. Swoon’s Heliotrope non-profit is literally building community, homes, shelter, and helping people become teachers in Haiti. (more at end of posting)
Swoon. Hong Kong. March 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Swoon. Hong Kong. March 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Swoon. This piece titled “Sonia” was destroyed in the process of bringing down a structure from the wall. Hong Kong. March 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Swoon. But we found one intact and for sale at the Art Central Art Fair in Hong Kong. March 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Swoon. Adeline the owner of Parisian Galerie L J at Art Central Art Fair is shown talking to a potential buyer not in the photo. Hong Kong. March 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
By donating our efforts along with the donated talents of 6 world-renowned Street Artists; Miss Van, Above, Li-Hill, Case Maclaim, Faith XLVII, and Icy & Sot, we encourage others to contribute to Heliotrope and to buy a custom new print from these artists. We’re proud to curate for this project, to be associated with these great artists, and to provide a platform for everyone to make these connections.
Additionally, Swoon herself will release new drawings from Haiti.
SWOON X Heliotrope X BSA : A Benefit for Heliotrope Foundation
curated by Steven P. Harrington and Jaime Rojo, co-founders of BSA
Opening Event: Thursday, April 6 from 6-9pm.
Beats and refreshments provided.
Location: 88 ½ Seventh Avenue (between 15th & 16th St.)
in Chelsea, New York
Pop-Up Exhibit runs April 7-9 from 11am – 6pm daily
Andrew Schoultz @SFMOMA
Andrew Schoultz’s drawings from the permanent collection of the San Francisco Museum Of Modern Art, are currently on view in the exhibition “Drawings from the Collection: 1980 – Today” at the museum.
Swoon @Skissernas Museum, Lund, Sweden
The Skissernas Museum in Lund, near Malmö in Sweden, has reopened in January 2017 its collection of sketches and preparatory drawings – the largest in the world. On this occasion the museum has invited SWOON for a solo exhibition and site-specific project.
SWOON’s exhibition, “Haven”, covers 3 floors of the museum with installations, as well as the courtyard with a site-specific monumental pasteup – her largest as of today. This is her first major exhibition in a museum in Sweden.
From January 28th thru August 13th 2017
