Visual Resistance

This is the seventh in a series of previews from the July 27-28 beneft art show If They Come for You in the Morning:

Swoon certainly needs no introduction to VR readers. One of the leading lights of the street art movement, Swoon is a Brooklyn-based printmaker who has been working on the streets since 1999. Her paper cutouts were some of the first street art I remember taking note of after I moved to New York, and since then her art has developed remarkably. Her larger-than-life linoleum and woodcut prints are a window to the secret heart of the city’s inhabitants.

After a massive installation at Deitch Projects last July, Swoon travelled quite a bit before returning to New York to begin working on building a three-raft scrap wood flotilla that will sail down the Mississippi River later this summer. Her prints are currently on display at the Museum of Modern Art and the Brooklyn Museum, in addition to the walls of Chinatown, Bed-Stuy, Gowanus, Williamsburg, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Austin, TX, etc…

Swoon has three prints in the Daniel McGowan benefit show. Pictured above is a detail from the original two-color linoleum print for the poster she created for the Celebrate People’s History series. As a testament to her work ethic alone, the piece is a knockout: each letter of the text is hand-carved from linoleum (in reverse). As far as I know the original print has never been exhibited before.

Also in the show are two prints from Swoon’s series of subway portraits, pictured below. The subway series are linoleum block prints with spraypanted stencil. All three prints are on durable, semi-transparent mylar. One of the subway prints is available for online purchase through Visual Resistance.

Swoon was an early and constant supporter of this project — many thanks to her for all the help!

Detail. More views here.

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