/recent works

/recent works brings together paintings and sculptures made during Swanson’s transition from Detroit to Brooklyn. Painting, found objects, commercial display, and circulating images become parts of the same material environment.

The paintings are constructed intuitively, without predetermined images or narratives. Marks, fragments, graphic forms, and appropriated visual information accumulate into provisional relationships. Rather than distinguish abstraction from the imagery surrounding it, the works allow the two to interfere with one another.

The sculptures extend this process into existing objects and systems of display. Swanson referred to these works at the time as “aggregates”: combinations of found materials whose histories and functions remain visible even as their relationships change. Commercial presentation becomes another material capable of organizing perception.

Made following Swanson’s move to New York, the works also reflect changing conditions of space, labor, and production. Economy is practical as much as formal—a way of continuing to work within new limitations. /recent works occupies a moment when distinctions between studio practice and the wider circulation of images and objects were becoming increasingly difficult to maintain.

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Photography courtesy the artist and gallery.