Moskowitz Bayse is happy to current Message Obtained, an exhibition of latest work and works on paper by Eleanor Swordy. This presentation is the artist’s fifth with the gallery, and can be on view October 26—December 14, 2024.
Portray possesses the ability to articulate the strain between an thought and its actualization. Rendered factors in house— the tip of an implement, a flower seed, or a star within the night time sky— decide how and to what finish this vitality is harnessed and deployed. Swordy’s works make the most of such factors to function visible and allegorical catalysts for actions with open-ended implications.
Strains information the attention, connecting moments which supply a way of route and circulation. Tracing the contours of type or evoking sensorial expertise, traces carry symbolic weight whereas rhythmically oscillating between intent and spontaneity. In Blessed, a determine holds a hose in mid-spray above a display screen, concurrently rinsing and revealing a picture. The spray itself implies each directionality and diffusion; opaque items of paint conjoin with translucent marks to animate the scene. In My Ophelia, a determine kneels alongside a block of marble, chisel held in mid-strike between hammer and stone. Brushy curvilinear marks type wavelengths between the hammer and the highest of the chisel suggesting the quiver of vibration whereas small chips of stone fly away from the block the place it meets the software. Exercise itself locations explicit emphasis on the in-between, inviting encounters in medias res.
Assorted method and brushwork are utilized to articulate quantity and a way of pictorial depth between painted components, whereas the unifying strategy to palette acts as a structuring drive within the interplay between line and airplane. In There It Goes, an occupied bus drives off as a determine chases after it, groceries from a torn bag trailing in mid-air. The foremost determine is painted with a brushy and opaque utility whereas the determine aboard the bus is subtle behind the window pane by way of a softer dry-brush strategy. In Correct Movement, a static star map rendered in sharp focus is about towards a shifting night time sky painted to emphasise the dynamic impact of celestial procession. Whereas modulated colour throughout compositions join actions between planes, these differentiating marks amplify allusion to expansive house.
Consideration of time as important to which means tethers these works collectively. Exertion, mediated by the implements or methods distinct to every picture, is depicted as each quick and sluggish. Espalier makes direct reference to the traditional observe of pruning and coaching timber in deference to magnificence and economic system. In Swordy’s image excruciating drive is slowed to close stillness as ropes pull and bind the tree into type. In Tracing a determine rapidly sketches a line drawing onto a sheet of translucent paper held over a picture of a seventeenth century still-life portray, visually collapsing then and now. Just like the observe of portray itself, motion as topic inherently depends on house and time, positing these works as each picture and occasion.