Josee Bienvenu Gallery
529 West 20th Street
(between 10th & 11th Avenues)
NY 10011
New York, NY
New York
North America
p: 1 212 206 7990
m:
f: 1 212 206 8494
w: www.joseebienvenugallery.com
Thursday February 12 - Saturday March 28, 2009 Opening reception: Thursday February 12, 6 to 8pm
Jos�e Bienvenu Gallery is pleased to present Terrain, a site-specific sound installation by Julianne Swartz. Terrain was originally commissioned by the Indianapolis Museum of Art for its entry pavilion, where it was on view from February to April 2008. Concurrently (through March 15) the Jewish Museum in New York is presenting The Sound of Light, a sound project also commissioned to the artist.
Julianne Swartz’s most recent works use sound and movement to articulate an architecture of frailty. The sculptures embody metaphors for tender communication, the fragility of the body, and the vulnerability and potency of the human heart. Her ephemeral installations don’t articulate the mass and volume of form, but the ebb and flow of life. The works serve as metaphors for tender communication, the fragility of the body, and the vulnerability and potency of the human heart.
Terrain, features a colorful web of wires and speakers suspended from the ceiling through which multiple sound channels mote to make a gentle landscape of sound. For the piece, Julianne Swartz asked 38 volunteers to think of someone they felt close to, and to say what he or she would whisper in that person's ear. Swartz has woven these intimacies so that visitors will hear abstract, yet discernable moments of conversation.
Born in Phoenix, AZ, Julianne Swartz received her MFA from Bard College in 2002 and currently lives and works in Kingston, NY. Her work has been widely exhibited throughout the United States and Europe. Selected exhibitions include: Voice & Void at The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, CT (2008); Liverpool Biennial at the Tate Liverpool, UK (2006); Counter Culture at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York (2004); 2004 Biennial Exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Breaking Away at P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, Queens, NY (2003).
