Standards

Exhibition text

Matéria is pleased to present Standards, Ian Swanson’s third solo exhibition with the gallery, and first in his hometown of Detroit since 2016. Standards brings together the artist’s latest cycle of large-scale monochrome paintings layered with dense textures and expressive mark-making after a period of increasingly subtractive approaches to his painterly application. Swanson’s relationship to the figure and ground continues to manifest in abstractions that ruminate on the confines of physical experience. His subjects are intimately woven into their environments, like vapor forming and then dissipating with time, each composition providing glimpses into a world of wandering silhouettes, momentarily suspended.

These leathery vinyl surfaces are fastened together with zip ties and cordage, and stretched taut between stainless steel hardware. This material exploration throughout his practice fuels an act of searching that is animated by the repeated use of ghostly bodies, each figure a channel through which to filter an introspective study on the nature of the human condition amidst the influences of daily life.

Swanson has been exploring the distinction between image making and its objecthood for more than a decade. His earlier works explored abstraction through impasto on canvas, sculpture composed of found objects, and audio-based performance. In recent bodies of work, the compositions of his paintings were reserved and minimal. Standards marks a return to the painterly techniques of works from earlier in his career.

Exhibition text: Matéria, 2024.