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"Swing State," curated by Jane Kim, embraces our world of uncertainty. As a phenomenally layered group exhibition capturing the gray area that thrives between extremes, "Swing State" will open on Sunday April 7, 2013 and unveil the motion behind the pendulum. That awkward space within the center of left and right, old and new as well as abstraction and figuration will be represented by a group of 13 New York based artists: Lisa Beck, Steve DiBenedetto, David Diao, Lydia Dona, Tamara Gonzales, Joanne Greenbaum, David Humphrey, James Hyde, Fabian Marcaccio, Donald Moffett, Thomas Nozkowski, Lucas Samaras, and David Shaw. å
The basis of the exhibition looks at the middle state between two places, whether in presidential elections, or in the creative states where the middle ignites ideas that are sometimes vulnerable and full of doubt. As we live in a moment where culture and art have become commoditized, "Swing
State" is a state of mind and manifesto of freedom.
Lisa Beck’s cracked mirrored surfaces in At the End of the Day, 2012 and Double Burst, 2012, rendering a two-fold reflection, are exercises of observation while Lydia Dona’s Cities of Doubt, 2012, free-flowing linear compositions expose a play of line where forms and figures seem to emerge before disappearing into the movement of the canvas. Different types of patterns crosshatch throughout Tamara Gonzales’ painting Destiny Conductor, 2012, suggesting a large primitive figure emerging in the center from an eclectic visual dialogue whereas David Humphrey’s Heat Cycle, 2012 radiates warmth with abstract gestural strokes of yellow, green, and black as a figure peers out from behind this formalist, dialectical movement.
In Perp, 2013, DiBenedetto layers paint of thick black lines that first appear to be distorted landscapes before evolving into a mysterious sense of otherness. His is an accumulation of paint that materializes into stages of an artist’s life. Likewise, David Diao’s Hammered Black and Blue, 2011 reflects the debacle of a painting of his that went to auction at Christie’s Hong Kong in 2005 and sold for an unusually low price, suggesting that art market tendencies and geometric abstraction are not isolated, self-referential systems.
Various polarities in abstraction become three-dimensional in the work of Joanne Greenbaum, James Hyde and Fabian Marcaccio. Hyde’s Percolate, 2011 and Marcaccio’s Child Soldier Structural Canvas #2, 2013 illustrate the painter’s ability to break free to new identities in form whereas Greenbaum presents a small series of misshaped, glazed porcelain and painted paper clay sculptures with three pen-and-ink scribble compositions that are accentuated with vibrant hues of paint.
The material of paint and its physical ability to function as an object independent of traditional canvas appears in the work of Donald Moffett’s Lot 010804, 2004/2011, where extruded paint builds-up an encrusted aluminum surface is appended to a wooden post, anchored in concrete. With Science Night, 2012, David Shaw references technological views of nature. A fluorescent spectrum subtly reflects on the wall from the back of the panel and calls into question how nature is viewed.
In Thomas Nozkowski’s Untitled, 1976, materials such as cloth, vinyl, glass, aquarium gravel and clay appear to break away while pieced together, serving as a recreation of an early floor sculpture. The cluster of handheld silverware seen in Lucas Samaras’ Untitled (Utensils #73) is an example from his series “Chroma Coupled Cutlery” that was first exhibited at Pace Gallery in 2001.
Jane Kim founded Jane Kim/Thrust Projects at 114 Bowery in the Lower East Side from 2005 - 2010, and is currently an independent curator and private dealer. “Swing State” is an exhibition in a temporary pop-up location on 119 Hester Street between Forsyth & Eldridge Streets from April 7 – May 5, 2013. Gallery hours are Wednesday to Sunday from 12:00 – 6:00 pm and by appointment. For further information and images, please contact Heryte Tequame at
347-981-5528 or
office@janekimgallery.com. We would like to thank all of the artists as well as Hudson, Veronica Levitt, Gwendolyn Scaggs, Dave Goerk, Tom Powel, Susannah Palmer, Eric Danner, Katie Bachner, Mary-Jean Sobiesiak, Taylor Franklin, Trisha Putkowski, Joyce Huang, and Lauren McCartney
