Marc Swanson (born in New Britain, Connecticut, United States) is an artist based in Brooklyn.
Marc Swanson received his MFA from the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, in 2004, and also studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, in Skowhegan, Maine, in 2000.[ citation needed ]
He is a contemporary American artist whose notably hand-made work is brings together formal preoccupations and references to personal history and identity conflict. He works in a variety of media, including sculpture, drawing, video, photography, and complex installations. [1] As art critic David Velasco notes, "Swanson is an automythologist, one who excels in crafting sparkling, enigmatic totems from the messiness of his own history; there kitsch and confession dovetail to reveal, not obscure, visceral thirsts." [2] His work was the subject of a one-person exhibition at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, at Cornell University, in 2008, and the accompanying catalogue was published in 2009, with an essay by Bill Arning. [3] His work has been included in group exhibitions at P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Miami Art Museum; and the Saatchi Gallery, London. [4]
Marc Swanson grew up the son of a former Marine and avid hunter in small-town New England. He then moved to San Francisco in the early 1990s, and became involved in the city's gay counterculture and club scene. He did not feel totally at home in either place, and he began making crystal-covered deer head sculptures as a way to explore, both physically and spiritually, the duality of masculine identities he was experiencing. [5]
In addition to the series of rhinestone-based sculptures, which he continues to explore, the artist's sculptural work employs a variety of materials, including light, wood, glass, fabric, gold and silver chain, mirror, and naturally-shed animal antlers. [6]
Killing Moon #3 is Swanson's self-portrait, where he depicts himself as a Yeti in his lair in the boiler room of P.S. 1. “The idea was that I would be the Yeti and basically collect garbage for four-to-six weeks every night to make the installation. I had to reconcile the fact that I’m an educated artist who knows about formal issues and academia, and figure out what the Yeti would make instead—these more ritualistic objects. But the Yeti also collects things in the world and then puts them together to sort of make sense of the world around him. It dawned on me that I pretty much do the same thing: so I’m the yeti and the yeti is me.” [7]
Of his one-person exhibition at Richard Gray Gallery, Chicago, in April/May 2009, Robyn Farrell Roulo writes, "Although influenced by Robert Rauschenberg and Joseph Cornell, Swanson’s approach is all his own. He wittingly reveals aspects of his psyche with each piece, stating that his work is conceptually, materially and formally driven. The subjects and materials used in the show run the gamut, but all are connected by theme. Reflections of his conservative upbringing in New England and current lifestyle are central to his inspiration. Swanson is a hunter and gatherer of media and identity." [6]
In December 2009 it was revealed that Marc Swanson was selected for the 2009 Norton Family Christmas Project commission. [8] Artists to have been awarded this commission in previous years include Kara Walker, Jim Hodges, Vik Muniz, Christian Marclay, Takashi Murakami, Yinka Shonibare, and Lawrence Weiner, among others. [9]
Marc Swanson is represented by Richard Gray Gallery and Inman Gallery in Houston, TX.
The Young British Artists, or YBAs—also referred to as Brit artists and Britart—is a loose group of visual artists who first began to exhibit together in London in 1988. Many of the YBA artists graduated from the BA Fine Art course at Goldsmiths, in the late 1980s, whereas some from the group had trained at Royal College of Art.
Marc Quinn is a British contemporary visual artist whose work includes sculpture, installation, and painting. Quinn explores "what it is to be human in the world today" through subjects including the body, genetics, identity, environment, and the media. His work has used materials that vary widely, from blood, bread and flowers, to marble and stainless steel. Quinn has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Sir John Soane's Museum, the Tate Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, Fondation Beyeler, Fondazione Prada, and South London Gallery. The artist was a notable member of the Young British Artists movement.
Damien Steven Hirst is an English artist and art collector. He is one of the Young British Artists (YBAs) who dominated the art scene in the UK during the 1990s. He is reportedly the United Kingdom's richest living artist, with his wealth estimated at US$384 million in the 2020 Sunday Times Rich List. During the 1990s his career was closely linked with the collector Charles Saatchi, but increasing frictions came to a head in 2003 and the relationship ended.
The Saatchi Gallery is a London gallery for contemporary art and an independent charity opened by Charles Saatchi in 1985. Exhibitions which drew upon the collection of Charles Saatchi, starting with US artists and minimalism, moving to the Damien Hirst-led Young British Artists, followed by shows purely of painting, led to Saatchi Gallery becoming a recognised authority in contemporary art globally. It has occupied different premises, first in North London, then the South Bank by the River Thames, and finally in Chelsea, Duke of York's HQ, its current location. In 2019 Saatchi Gallery became a registered charity and began a new chapter in its history. Recent exhibitions include the major solo exhibition of the artist JR, JR: Chronicles, and London Grads Now in September 2019 lending the gallery spaces to graduates from leading fine art schools who experienced the cancellation of physical degree shows due to the pandemic.
Tom Friedman is an American conceptual sculptor. He was born in St. Louis, Missouri and received a BFA in graphic illustration from Washington University in St. Louis (1988) and an MFA in sculpture from the University of Illinois at Chicago (1990.). As a conceptual artist he works in diverse media including sculpture, painting, drawing, video, and installation.
Gavin Turk is a British artist from Guildford in Surrey, and was considered to be one of the Young British Artists. Turk's oeuvre deals with issues of authenticity and identity, engaged with modernist and avant-garde debates surrounding the 'myth' of the artist and the 'authorship' of a work of art.
Yinka Shonibare, is a British artist living in the United Kingdom. His work explores cultural identity, colonialism and post-colonialism within the contemporary context of globalisation. A hallmark of his art is the brightly coloured Ankara fabric he uses. As Shonibare is paralysed on one side of his body, he uses assistants to make works under his direction.
Conrad Hartley Pelham Shawcross is a British artist specializing in mechanical sculptures based on philosophical and scientific ideas. When he was elected, Conrad Shawcross was the youngest living member of the Royal Academy of Arts.
Elliott Hundley is an American artist, living and working in Los Angeles.
Rodney McMillian is an artist based in Los Angeles. McMillian is a Professor of Sculpture at the UCLA School of Arts and Architecture at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Angela Dufresne is a Brooklyn based American artist known for paintings that explore narrative in a variety of ways. Dufresne holds a BFA from Kansas City Art Institute, MO and an MFA from Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia, PA. She is currently faculty at the Rhode Island School of Design.
Dana Frankfort is an artist based in Houston and a painting professor at University of Houston. Her work often engages with the history of abstract art and features bright colors, gestural brushwork, and text.
Yuken Teruya is one of the most representative and most successful artists in a generation of Japanese artists born in the 1970s, who came of age amidst the disasters and economic decline of Japan during the 1990s. His is currently based in New York City and Berlin.
Nicolas Carone belonged to the early generation of New York School Abstract Expressionist artists. Their artistic innovation by the 1950s had been recognized internationally, including in London and Paris. New York School Abstract Expressionism, represented by Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Conrad Marca-Relli and others, became a leading art movement of the postwar era.
María Elena González is a Cuban-American sculptor based in Brooklyn and the Bay Area. She is known for objects, installations and public art that interweave post-minimalist form, conceptual art and concern for materials and craft. Her early work explored themes of memory, family, identity, loss and dislocation through formal, architectural and mapping modes that address site, place and social circumstances; her later work makes connections between nature and art, engaging a broad range of media and sensory experience. In 2020, artist and scholar Ellen Levy wrote "González's art re-invents nature as culture" through an "exquisite attunement" that uncovers formal and thematic analogies between both realms and synesthetic connections between visual and aural senses.
Andrew Cornell Robinson is an American artist and designer. He is based in New York City.
Hiroyuki Hamada is a Japanese born sculptor based in the United States.
Karen Heagle is an American artist, known for autobiographical and art historical subject matter. Her work comments on contemporary culture through a queer perspective with a focus on feminist agendas.
Demetrius Oliver is an American artist and educator based in New York City. He is known for site-specific, multi-disciplinary installations using photography, sculpture, and video. Using common materials and found imagery, his work explores such themes as American transcendentalism, music, and cosmology.
Nicole Awai is an artist and educator based in Brooklyn, New York and Austin, Texas. Her work captures both Caribbean and American landscapes and experiences and engages in cultural critique. She works in many media including painting, photography, drawing, installations, ceramics, and sculpture as well as found objects.
