RE:VIEW GALLERY CURRENT EXHIBIT IAN SWANSON

RE:VIEW GALLERY
444 W. Willis, #112, Detroit, MI 48201
info@reviewcontemporary.com
313.833.9000 | Thu-Sat, noon – 6p.m.

In his first solo exhibit at Re:View Gallery, Ian Swanson presents a group of paintings and sculptures risen from a repetitious engagement with formalist reductions and “recombinations” of specific cultural archetypes; creating a shift into a parallel, albeit altered, space. In this latest body of work, Swanson continues to use his studio practice as a catalyst towards a casual yet sophisticated investigation of historical, popular, and aesthetic culture.

The sculptures included in this exhibition take as a preliminary unifying concept the use of a methodology derived from commercial marketing techniques and display solutions, stimulating both aesthetic and societal dialogs within the “panopticon of contemporary visual culture.” Found objects are given allowance to behave as they are, reactivated through artistic manipulation and intervention.

In his paintings, Swanson claims no conceptual agenda and intends to evoke no narrative outside of painting itself. These works take their own authenticity and art historical relationships as givens, allowing free space for intuitive interaction, appropriation and manipulation; thereby functioning beyond the narrow scope of aesthetic boundaries and operating in a zone that is post-authentic, post-object, post-digital, and where the ubiquity of images is the status quo.

Ian Swanson was born in Detroit, MI and was raised in the suburbs east of the city. He attended Wayne State University where he received a BFA in painting. He has exhibited nationally, including recent exhibitions in NYC at Allegra LaViola, Ed. Varie, and BOSI Contemporary. In late September 2012, he will be exhibiting as a part of the Peekskill Project V for the duration of 2012, organized by the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art, a private museum in upstate New York. He currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY, where he is an MFA candidate at Pratt Institute.