| NEW IMAGE ART
7908 Santa Monica Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90046
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DROWN YOUR BOATS
a solo exhibition by SWOON
February 16th – April 19th
Opening reception
February 16th 7 – 10pm
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New Image Art is pleased to announce the first Los Angeles solo exhibition
by SWOON, "Drown Your Boats." Partially inspired by Angela
Carter's "Burning Your Boats," this show, and much of SWOON's
work is not only a momentary glimpse in contemporary life; her work
speaks of tales, legends, and variations on mythic themes, sparked by
great vitality, inventiveness, and a deeply macabre imagination. Having
recently participated in an armada of sorts SWOON along with other fellow
Pittsburgh "boat punks" constructed their own flotilla and
sailed down the Hudson and Mississippi Rivers. For this new exhibition
SWOON will be executing a canoe as her central installation piece that
will later become part of a Deitch Projects show this Fall.
SWOON's worlds are often populated by realistically rendered-- and evocatively
cutout street people, often her friends and family. Riding bikes, talking
on a stoop, going grocery shopping-- these people traverse a cityscape
of her own unique invention. Bridges, fire escapes, water towers and
street signs create crisscrossing shadows and spaces through which her
figures move. Inspired by both art historical and folk sources, ranging
from German Expressionist wood block prints to Indonesian shadow puppets,
SWOON is a master of using cut paper to play with positive and negative
space in a conceptually driven exploration of the experience of the
streets.
You've probably encountered SWOON's work before: she has been covering
the streets of New York with her signature cutouts for over several
years. Often found in beautiful states of decay, her wheat-pasted cut
outs "collaborate" with the street to create a time-based
public artwork. In conjunction with her collective TOYSHOP, she has
executed projects ranging from billboard alterations and poster campaigns,
to street parties and sculptural installations. Her recent work has
focused on creating peepholes throughout the city in subtle places where,
once discovered, the viewer can glimpse a hidden dream world through
the unassuming aperture.
SWOON has been traveling for the past few years creating exhibitions
and workshops in the United States and Europe. Other collaborators include
Brooklyn based art collectives, Glowlab, Black Label, Change Agent,
the Madagascar Institute and the Barnstormers. Her work was included
in P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center's Greater New York 2005, Deitch Projects'
special design district space art Art Basel Miami 2005, and New Image
Art's Burning House exhibition with Faile and David Ellis in 2007 which
then went on to the Museum Het Domain, Netherlands.
SWOON's work is also part of the permanent collections of Museum of
Modern Art, Brooklyn Museum of Art, and Tudor Investments.
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Special thanks to RVCA's Artist Network Program and Media Temple.
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Read
the Los Angeles Times review
Read
another Los Angeles Times review
Read
the Cool Hunting review
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Photographs by
Ashira Seigel and Josh White
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