Artist name: Brett Swenson
Dates of residency: September – November
Born: 1987
Hometown: Vernon Hills, IL
Lives and works: Brooklyn, NY
URL: http://www.brettswenson.com/
Education: BFA, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI, 2010; Beloit College, Beloit, WI, 2005-2006.
BIO/ STATEMENT:
Brett Swenson’s practice explores the mutability of memory and perception. His works subvert the constructs of time, measurement, and categorization with a mixture of sculpture, video, photography, and installation. Through performative interventions and materials including obsidian, architectural glass, plaster, and industrial detritus, he embeds improbable human signatures within natural and geologic systems. Examining the relationship between nature and our constructed environment, his sculptural works manifest as uncanny juxtapositions of the mundane and the phenomenal, evidence of something that can’t be dreamed. His performative video works are portals into shadowed histories, embodying the poetics of destruction and decay by placing viewers within worlds of entropic dissolution. Negotiating between action and re-action, intention and occurrence, connections are ultimately drawn between the body and the hyper-realities of material time and space. These choreographed actions give form to narratives in which reality and fiction are subjective, and where man and materiality are hopelessly entangled.
Solo exhibitions include: “Potential Difference”, Agnes Varis Art Center, Urban Glass, Brooklyn, NY 2014. Select group exhibitions include: SIKKA Art Fair, Dubai 2016; “Perched in the Eye of a Tornado” Ying Space, Beijing 2015; “Art of the Fellowship” Museum of American Glass at WheatonArts, NJ 2015; Pioneer Works Artist in Residence, Brooklyn 2014; “Come Together: Surviving Sandy” Brooklyn 2013; “Body and Material” Greenpoint Film Festival, Brooklyn 2012; “Fractured” Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk VA 2011; {Superposition}, Hyperopia Projects, Seattle 2011; “The Post-Glass Video Festival” Sydney College of Art, Australia 2011; “Art Here Art Now”, University of Chicago/HyPa IL 2011; “The Post-Glass Video Festival” Heller Gallery, New York 2010; “Limits Complete” Gallery GB4, Providence, RI 2010; “A Thin Veneer” RISD Museum Gelman Gallery, Providence, RI 2009
Residencies include: 2016, Urban Glass Studio Grant, Brooklyn, NY; 2015 Investigation on the Extreme Land: DEFAULT 15, RAMDOM association, Gagliano Del Capo, ITA; 2014, Pioneer Works Artist in Residence, Brooklyn, NY
SUPPORT: Brett Swenson’s 3-month residency is made possible with support from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) ArtWorks grant and a matching fund from the Dedalus Foundation.
