Past

2011

 Barbara Crawford, Four Decades of Photography.  

October 21 - Nov 26
sponsored in part by The Kentucky Foundation for Women

ALSO

Swanson Contemporary will present ephemeral photocopy action on October  14, 2011.  This action will be a part of the performance art kongress scheduled for October 12 - 16th of 2011.  The participating artists will each create a photomontage in the spirit of "Time Arts".  This is a term that originated in Europe due to the invention of the photocopier and concept of ephemeral photography.  The use of real time to create this gallery exhibition is of great importance, and as such, the photos from Swanson Contemporary will not be available until the day after the show is put together.  Please read below the texts for the performance art kongress. Participating artists are:  Penny Arcade, Laura "Borealis" Crapo, Chris Golas, Thomas Albrect, Amy Klement, Arianne Foks, Joseph Ravens, Cynthia Norton, Dima Stratkovsky, Rae Goodwin, Doreen Maloney, Theo Edmonds.  

Lex LAK Lou 2011 
(Lexington Live Art Kongress Louisville)

PROGRAM OVERVIEW
Lex LAK Lou 2011 is an international performance art festival in Lexington and Louisville, Kentucky, scheduled for October 12-16, 2011.

A diverse group of European and American artists will perform their work at various venues in Lexington and Louisville and participate in panel discussions hosted on campus at the University of Kentucky.

The 20+ participating artists represent a variety of contemporary performance practices, which range from the confrontational interaction with the audience to traditional proscenium presentation. The international focus of Lex LAK Lou 2011 provides Kentucky-based artists a new opportunity for the cross-cultural sharing of ideas and the chance to participate in a truly international dialog around performance art.

University of Kentucky Department of Art
Lexington Art League
Land of Tomorrow Gallery (LOT)
Swanson Contemporary Art Gallery Louisville
Lexington Visual Collective

Parlay Social

Rodney Hatfield aka Art Snake

Note to Self

all new works

Through October 8, 2011

Rodney Hatfield has been doing solo exhibits at various Swanson Galleries every other autumn since 1989. To celebrate this twelfth edition he has added a new twist with the inclusion of over 90 energetic small paintings on paper or cardboard, along with eight constructions made primarily from drift wood from the Falls of the Ohio, and more than a dozen bold canvases, some of which measure up to eight feet long.

Hatfield, who now calls Louisville home, has steadily emerged as one of the area’s most collected artists.

In its  2011 summer issue, Art News magazine, in a national review of his work which included a color photograph, called it, “bizarre, amusing, and enigmatic work that echoes (Paul) Klee with dense jungle foliage reminiscent of Rousseau.”

Hours 11-6, Wed - Sat

The Performer

Falling Man

Boats

Ezra Kellerman
Bright Lights at Night

In The Lower Level Gallery, partial view

New constellations for a new age.  Screens flicker and replace twinkling stars; patterns and images emerge as lines from screen to laptop to pocket connect themselves through rooms, over sidewalks, and across neighborhoods.

Thaniel Ion Lee "An ImPerfect Circle"

Swanson

Contemporary

638 East Market Street

Friday, July 1

exhibit continues through August 13, 2011

Thaniel Ion Lee's recent ink drawings on paper evoke a fantastic vision of life, death, nature, and desire that could easily be inspired by the Early Renaissance painter Hieronymus Bosch's "Garden of Earthly Delights." Lee's "family" of bizarre and distorted imagery-from outstretched eyeballs to floating religious figures, appear as direct descendents of Bosch's eccentric and often grotesque figures culled from an invented "heaven" and "hell." In several works, disembodied anatomical parts, such as female breasts and brains appear to grow from a strange garden, or flowering bed of black line.

Manipulating a Sharpie pen with his mouth, Lee's drawing technique forces his eye within inches of the paper's surface. In order to fully apprehend certain details in the drawings and to experience first-hand the artist's own proximity to the work, the viewer must also observe it at close range.

Despite his formal academic training, Lee eschews traditional representation, choosing to render images and objects in a whimsical manner reminiscent of visionary or folk art. The artist states that for his exhibit at Swanson Contemporary, he wanted "to simplify his technique and do what he would have done as a 17 year old, if a 17 year old knew anything about art history."

Lee notes that his work incorporates many art historical traditions and practices, including Surrealist automatic drawing (designed to reveal the subconscious) as well as Abstract Expressionist painting, evident in Lee's "all-over" attention to the surface. He also appropriates conceptual strategies similar to artist Sol LeWitt who established rules for realizing process-based artwork. For his drawings at Swanson Contemporary, for example, Lee began each work with an attempt to draw a perfect circle. Yet, rather than produce uniform and symmetrical works that converge on a Minimalist aesthetic (as seen in LeWitt's gridded wall drawings and geometric forms, for example), Lee's strategy yields ornate decoration, twisted line, and imaginary worlds. Although an ultimately imperfect circle, Lee's drawings successfully negotiate ideals of art with realities of constraint. According to the artist, such limitation informs the outcome of any aesthetic.

-Maiza Hixson

Red Faced Couple, 23 x 24 inches. West African Colonial Figures, archival ink jet photography,

Topless Woman in Red Shorts, 23 x 19" West African Colonial Style, archival ink jet photography

Slave 23x27. West African Colonial Figures, archival ink jet photography

1 Fissurellidae 2

acrylic on aluminum/paper laminate, $950

2 Rad. Asym. Orph 3

acrylic on zinc, $1,200

3 White Duo A & B

acrylic on aluminum, $1,200

4 White Duo

detail

5 Kundalini

acrylic on aluminum, $950

6 A. Instablis 1.2

61 x 61 x 5 inches

acrylic on steel, $5,000

7 A. Instablis 2.2

61 x 61 x 5 inches

acrylic on steel, $5,000

8 Cusp

28 x 24 x 4.5 inches

acrylic on steel, $950

119 Rodgers Street

Patrick Smith

Jan 7 - Feb. 12
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Left: Methamphetanine, 46 x 36

Right: Cat-tastrrophe, 48 x 36

2010

Oil And Water Don't Mix by

Dan Pfalzgraf

Nov 5 - Dec 11
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Opening reception is Friday Nov. 5th, 6 - 9PM (during the First Friday Trolley Hop)

Review of show at Louisville Insider

All pieces are charcoal, oil paint and motor oil on paper 

(scroll down for artists statement)

Swimmer 81

Swimmer 74

Swimmer 86

Swimmer 82 

Oil and Water Don't Mix

Artist Statement The basis of the latest series of work that I have created on is centered on the emphasis placed on our society’s dependence on oil. It all started out innocently enough a couple years ago while playing around making paintings using dirty motor oil saved from the general maintenance of my truck. I originally was thinking about the utilization of a waste product and turning it into something more valued and appreciated on an aesthetic level. Then, in the summer of 2008, the cost of gasoline soared to record prices of over $4.00 per gallon nationally (reaching over $4.60 per gallon in some states) and I began to envision a day when painting with motor oil could one day rival painting with gold leaf in value. As fear, outrage, and adaptation ensued over the rising gas prices, it showed just how entrenched every part of out society is in oil production. While the stakes rose with oil usage, it occurred to me how oil has replaced water as the source of life for civilized societies and communities were falling into upheaval over the skyrocketing costs of living. As scientists universally agree that water is the source of life on the planet, so too has oil become the source of life for humankind's large, complex global network. Out of that environment, "Oil and Water Don’t Mix" was born. For combining the ideas of “water creates life” and “oil creates civilizations” themes, I decided to paint images of figures (painted with the motor oil) swimming through water. Two large, thirty foot long pieces hanging from the ceilings are meant to resemble a swimming relay race (perhaps subconsciously drawing inspiration from the swimming events during 2008 summer Olympic Games that also occurred around the same time I began work on this series). They loosely represent the struggle, or race, between the major powers of the world to control as much of the oil supplies of the Middle East and the rest of the planet. On one side of the installation hangs a salon display of roughly 40 individual minor swimmers, who also take on a very minor individual role in the race, but rarely can do much more than wait and watch as the events unfold above them, waiting to see how the race will affect them and their lives. On the other side of the installation hangs a collection of portraits of executives from a large international oil company. They sit posed along the sidelines, watching the proceedings from their gilt framed positions. We are all affected by the politics surrounding oil, even though we each only have a very modest voice in its policies. The recent BP Mexican Gulf oil spill obviously didn’t occur until I was well underway with this body of work, but it now creates new associations with the work, and lends an eerie, unintended sense of prophesy to it. The events surrounding that catastrophe only exemplifies and reinforces the continuing struggle modern life will forever have to deal with as we support systems based on petroleum production and use. It is a sad, new level of relevance that I feel this work will hold for many years to come as more crisis’s like this occur while we struggle with this crude source of power. All the figures in this work are blind contour drawings (drawing the figures without looking at them until I've completed the drawings). This is a drawing method I've been working with for many years, and is a very instinctual and immediate process that references my deep appreciation of the original, instinctual cave painters from tens of thousands of years ago. Working with this method is my modest attempt to draw a line through history from their work then to my work today.

New Work by

Jacob Heustis

- Aug 4 - Aug 28

right: installation view, Sold # 1 and 2, both 96 x 108 inches

Sold #2 detail:

Glass Uprising - May 21 - June 26

Swanson Contemporary and Zephyr Gallery

1. installation view of Glass Upriasing. 2. Lucy Lyon (foreground), Jeremy Lepisto (middle) Nicole Chesney (wall)

Featured artists at Swanson Contemporary include:

Nicole Chesney

Susan Taylor Glasgow

Jeremy Lepisto

Lucy Lyon

Ethan Stern

Matthew Szosz

Tim Tate

1. Tim Tate 2. Susan Taylor Glasgow

3. Matthew Szosz

Perpetually Preserved, April 2 - May 8

Tar Landscape with orange sky (3 moons). Oil and Tar on Found Wood

Swanson Contemporary is proud to present Perpetually Preserved, an exhibit that features the works of Marco Logsdon, Renee Shaw and Michael Wayne. Each artist explores a different approach to preservation.

Logsdon is a painter from Lexington who uses oil and tar to create and preserve the idea of a “landscape” painting. They are not based on actual landscapes but rather the idea of what a landscape could be, drenched in color and tar. These “scapes” have a planetary feel that are lonely, apocalyptic and beautiful all at the same time. Logsdon uses found wood and doors to create his paintings as a play on preservation by his use of discarded materials. He uses the scrap wood given to him by a carpenter friend and this accounts for the size variations in his small works. Logsdon says he looks for the inherent patterning in the wood and plays off it as he creates each piece.

Shaw, a former UK student and now a resident of Washington DC, is a collector. She has found a way to “preserve” her collection in canning jars. These jars are filled on odd assortment of items she finds in her daily life. These items can be just about anything from plastic golf figures, seed pods, tampons, silk flowers to pre-packaged pills. She uses vegetable oil to suspend the items and create a luminous glow to each piece. Shaw is also a video artist and has created a video piece/installation that accompanies the jars showing the art of collecting in nature using a purely visual format absent of narration.

Wayne, also from Lexington, works with digital images of landscapes he takes while driving or riding in a car. He captures a moment, a blurred landscape caught quickly from the corner of the eye. He finds beauty in this moment and preserves its fleeting nature. This passing of time remains documented by mounting each piece on found wood or aluminum. Wayne is interested in alternative processes for displaying his photography. The goal is to eliminate the use of glass and give the viewer a more personal view of each piece without a barrier or separation. The works are displayed as objects to preserve a sight or memory that could have been quickly forgotten.

Debra Clem - Transparency - FEB 26 - MAR 27 - 2010

“Zeon” oil, acrylic, and digital image on canvas panel 94" x 37" 2009

Clem’s exhibition includes large-scale, mixed media works comprised of digital images, acrylic, oil, and other materials.

The digital images in Clem’s works are manipulated in Photoshop and printed directly onto large-scale canvas. Figures or representational images are painted in oil directly onto the surface with transparent oil glaze applications. Additional textures are added using various acrylic mediums or found materials.

Clem is interested in creating multiple psychological and physical levels in her paintings. In many cases, the digital photograph is exposed through the painted human forms, creating a literal and psychological dialogue between disparate layered images.

Several of the works focus on the nude female form. These works explore physical, psychological, and spiritual transformations. Other works focus on contemporary environmental concerns, such as pollution and industrial or consumer waste. In particular, Clem is interested in those environmental issues that directly affect the region in which she lives.

Shayne Hull - Alterations - JAN 15 - FEB 20 - 2010

“Cena Larvae” Mixed media collage 11” X 22” 2009

2009

Dylan mortimer and Thaniel lee

Body and Soul

Oct 16th - Nov 21st

Rodney hatfield aka Art Snake

When I Wake Up

Sep 4th - Oct 10th

Barry Motes

Parables And Portals

Jul 17th - Aug 29th

KY Jelly

Group Show

Apr 2nd - May 9th

Scott Scarboro

Lucky Planet F

Feb 20th - Mar 29th

2008

Lennon Michalski and Lawrence Tarpey

Jan 4th - Feb 9th

2007

Roar Shock - 21 artists respond to poetry by Adam Day

Nov 16th - Dec 29th

2006

group show

Oct - Nov