SWOON - Dietch Catalog

When the 27-year-old Brooklyn street artist Swoon had her first one-person gallery exhibition at New York’s Deitch Projects in 2005, the area surrounding the gallery was so overrun with fans and friends that neither cars nor pedestrians could pass through. Reviews in all of the major New York papers, and even national news sources like Newsday, raved—crediting her intricate paper cut-outs and hand-pulled block prints of realistically-rendered street people (often friends and family doing ordinary things) with depicting no less than “the poetry of urban life.” Her figures, according to Newsday, are rendered with “breathtaking precision [and] radiate humanity and compassion.” Most people know of Swoon through her wheat-pasted cut-outs, which have appeared throughout New York for the better part of the last decade. Usually seen in a state of decay, they are powerful time-based public artworks that only get more potent as they age. For the past two years, Swoon has been traveling the world, creating exhibitions and workshops. Published to accompany the artist’s highly anticipated fall 2008 exhibition at Deitch’s Long Island City project space, this first monograph documents exhibitions from 2005 to 2007, as well as collaborations created in Russia, Ukraine and throughout the United States.

PUBLISHED BY: Deitch Projects
FORMAT: Pbk, 7.5×11 in. / 64 pgs / 80 color.
ISBN: 9780977868667 ISBN10: 0977868664

About the Artist

Swoon

Swoon (American, b.1977) is a notable Street artist, who has contributed to the Pop Art movement. She was born in New London, CT, and raised in Daytona Beach, FL. The artist’s real name is Caledonia Dance Curry. In 1997, Swoon moved to New York, where she obtained a BA in Fine Arts from the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY.

One of her most recognized pieces is called Anthropocene Extinction. Swoon’s signature works include life-size human forms that she creates from recycled newsprint paper. It takes her weeks to paint and cut out each figure in her studio, and once the forms are complete, she takes them to the streets of New York and glues them to the side of buildings using wheat paste. When Swoon first began creating Street Art, she focused her energy on things that were meant to disappear and her ability to let them go. The creations are not as permanent as spray paint, but they stay around for a long time. The art works eventually either flake or rot away. In order to find a spot to hang her works of art, Swoon rides around the streets of New York looking for appropriate places. Once she locates a space that is large enough and that receives a lot of visibility, she hangs the art alone. You can find her creations on trash cans, light poles, walls, doors, rooftops, and sidewalks within the city of New York; the figures have gained critical acclaim.

Swoon was heavily influenced by Gordon-Matta-Clarke who was well-known for his temporary works in the city streets. In his series Building Cuts, he went on location to buildings that were scheduled to be demolished and created works of art from sections he had cut from doorways, walls, floors, and ceilings. Swoon does not classify her work as destructive or illegal because it is not permanent, but her artwork is classified under the category of defacement of property. She often does her work in the middle of the day, and various projects have been exhibited in Shoreditch, London, at the Black Rats Projects. Swoon currently lives and works in New York.