Alice Arnold has a new short film “To Be Seen” that is debuting:
Friday October 28
7pm @
DCTV
87 Lafayette Street NYC.
The film is a mix of interviews (with artists, cultural and media theorists, marketing specialists and the public), integrated into the visuality of the streets - images of street art, graffiti, people, ephemera and commercial images in the public sphere.
The 26min short features various street artists, Swoon among them.
hat tip to Jeremy
The New York Times put out an article about Swoon today, in conjuction with Barry McGee. It’s a write up about the two showing at Deitch Projects. While the article is brief and on the surface complimentary and supportive, there is something that I took particular note of as it was mentioned from the Title and referenced in the text. This concept or idea of “Outsider Art and Outsider Artists”. This term has been around for quite a while now, and in a nutshell was coined in 1972 by an art critic named Roger Cardinal. His definition derived from Art Brut which was the concept of French artist and sculptor Jean Dubuffet.
“Those works created from solitude and from pure and authentic creative impulses - where the worries of competition, acclaim and social promotion do not interfere - are, because of these very facts, more precious than the productions of professions. After a certain familiarity with these flourishings of an exalted feverishness, live so fully and so intensely by their authors, we cannot avoid the feeling that in relation to these works, cultural art in its entirety appears to be the game of a futile society, a fallacious parade.” - Jean Dubuffet.
I made a trip back to the deitch last week to get another round of shots of the show in the hopes of getting the work sans the crowd— I had no idea what I was in store for. This is by far one of the greatest efforts I have seen in a show in a very long time, matter of fact I can’t think of the last artist that I saw who put as much work into an opening as Swoon has at deitch. If you can look beyond the surface, pause and look more, walk a bit, stop and really observe you will see the painstaking amount of consideration, planning and compositional exectution of space that went into every facet of this show.
Going thru these photos while putting them up tonite, I had my own pauses and reflections. There is content to this work, substance, soul, work that bears record that it was created with a purpose, with an intention, honestly and transparently. It can take whatever you throw at it, however deep you dig, you can still go further.
Speaking for myself, nothing in this show was in vain, it carried a serious impact and over the last month has completely inspired me, if it didn’t I honestly would not be writing so much about it.
There are over 100 new photos for you to check out, I could probably take 100 more.
Swoon Deitch Revisited
Swoon Feature also updated