Ena Swansea
new paintings
October 18–November 23, 2013
Locks Gallery
600 Washington Square South
Philadelphia, PA 19106
Hours: Tuesday–Saturday 10am–6pm
T +215 629 1000
F +215 629 3868
Locks Gallery is pleased to present a new series of paintings by New York artist Ena Swansea. There will be a reception for the artist on November 1, 5:30–7:30pm. The exhibition will be on view October 18 through November 23. A fully illustrated catalog, with an essay by critic and author Gregory Volk, is available.
The exhibition includes 14 new paintings, ranging in scale from small to monumental. Swansea creates ephemeral and cinematic perspectives of fleeting moments, always somehow urban, even when the painting seems at first glance to be a landscape.
As Volk writes, “Jagged, white snow piles, mottled with gray smudges and blue streaks, appear as rugged geologic structures beneath a dark sky, akin to lava formations either on this planet or another. A tiny person scrambling along the ridge recalls a 19th-century wanderer far out in awe-inspiring nature, but also an astronaut during a lunar landing, or perhaps a science-fiction astronaut in the remote future investigating an alien planet. There is something exaggerated, hilarious, goofy, and absurd about this painting of a snowstorm apocalypse that temporarily turned Central Park into a remote Arctic wilderness navigated only by a solitary explorer. Another important characteristic of Swansea’s oil paintings is how they absorb non-painterly forms of representation, like movies, photographs, videos, and the cinema, even x-ray images.”
Swansea has had over a dozen solo exhibits since 2000; her most recent one-person exhibit was also in 2013 in Seoul, South Korea. Deichtorhallen Hamburg organized a two-person, 40-painting survey of Swansea, alongside the work of Robert Lucander, in 2011. She was selected to create a ”Goyesque” in September 2010, an ephemeral painting on the sand that covers the entire floor of the Roman arena in Arles, France, a corrida named after the Spanish master who often depicted the bullfight. In 2008, her first museum survey was held at the Musee d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Luxembourg. Swansea’s first solo show at Locks Gallery was in 2002, and she has been included in the group exhibitions The Tipping Point, Water is Best, and New Light.
Swansea’s work has featured in important group exhibitions, such as Greater New York 2005, P.S.1 MoMA, New York; Storytellers, Hamburger Kunstalle, 2005; The Triumph of Painting, part III, Saatchi Gallery, London, 2006; Zurück zur Figur. Malerei der Gegenwart, Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung, Munich 2006/7; Most Wanted, The Olbricht Collection; True Romance. Allegories of Love from the Renaissance to the Present, Kunsthalle Wien 2007/8, and Symbolism, Von der Heydt Museum, Wuppertal.
She has works in numerous museum collections, including The Museum of Modern Art in New York, Cornell University Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Galerie Neue Meister/Albertinum Dresden, and Deichtorhallen, Sammlung Falckenberg, Hamburg. She is the recipient of a Hassam, Speicher, Betts and Symons Purchase Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
For additional information, please contact Locks Gallery at +1 215 629 1000 or email info [at] locksgallery.com.