Swoon

"These portraits are x-rays of my city plastered back upon its surface. Through the hundreds of holes that I cut into them, I am trying to interact with the walls beneath them." -swoon

“I like my artwork to have a lifecycle. I’ve done paintings using stencils. But for me the paintings don’t do anything. They just stay there. But in working with paper, as I do now, the pieces become alive. It’s organic. The paper curls. It ages. It rots. It’s responsive.” -swoon

I have been an admireror and fan of Brooklyn based artist Swoon for many years because of her commitment to the “old world skill” of relief printmaking and how her wheat pasted, post aerosol, life size prints tell stories that capture the attention of their passers by. I first noticed her work wheat pasted on Rivington Street in NYC as I walked to work every day. Her work shows the influence of German Expressionist wood block prints as well as Indonesian shadow puppets.

A recent piece from her series commenting on the disappearance of young Mexican women that work in sweatshops in Ciudad Juarez can be found on the streets of the Mission District in San Francisco. Her combination of relief wood prints on craft paper with white cut outs creates an amazing shire size wall mural that draws the viewer in to ponder the content. Swoon subjects her work to the transformative qualities of the outside urban world. Over time her pieces fade, vines to grow up them, other tags accumulate, paint is dripped on them and they magically become part of the urban streetscape.