Message received

October 26 - December 14, 2024

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Moskowitz Bayse is pleased to present Message Received, an exhibition of new paintings and works on paper by Eleanor Swordy. This presentation is the artist’s fifth with the gallery, and will be on view October 26 - December 14, 2024.

Painting possesses the power to articulate the tension between an idea and its actualization. Rendered points in space— the tip of an implement, a flower seed, or a star in the night sky— determine how and to what end this energy is harnessed and deployed. Swordy’s works utilize such points to serve as visual and allegorical catalysts for actions with open-ended implications.

Lines guide the eye, connecting moments which offer a sense of direction and flow. Tracing the contours of form or evoking sensorial experience, lines carry symbolic weight while rhythmically oscillating between intent and spontaneity. In Blessed, a figure holds a hose in mid-spray above a screen, simultaneously rinsing and revealing an image. The spray itself implies both directionality and diffusion; opaque units of paint conjoin with translucent marks to animate the scene. In My Ophelia, a figure kneels alongside a block of marble, chisel held in mid-strike between hammer and stone. Brushy curvilinear marks form wavelengths between the hammer and the top of the chisel suggesting the quiver of vibration while small chips of stone fly away from the block where it meets the tool. Activity itself places particular emphasis on the in-between, inviting encounters in medias res.

Varied technique and brushwork are utilized to articulate volume and a sense of pictorial depth between painted elements, while the unifying approach to palette acts as a structuring force in the interaction between line and plane. In There It Goes, an occupied bus drives off as a figure chases after it, groceries from a torn bag trailing in mid-air. The foremost figure is painted with a brushy and opaque application while the figure aboard the bus is diffused behind the window pane via a softer dry-brush approach. In Proper Motion, a static star map rendered in sharp focus is set against a shifting night sky painted to emphasize the dynamic effect of celestial procession. While modulated color across compositions connect actions between planes, these differentiating marks amplify allusion to expansive space. 

Consideration of time as essential to meaning tethers these works together. Exertion, mediated by the implements or strategies distinct to each image, is depicted as both fast and slow. Espalier makes direct reference to the ancient practice of pruning and training trees in deference to beauty and economy. In Swordy’s picture excruciating force is slowed to near stillness as ropes pull and bind the tree into form. In Tracing a figure quickly sketches a line drawing onto a sheet of translucent paper held over an image of a 17th century still-life painting, visually collapsing then and now. Like the practice of painting itself, action as subject inherently relies on space and time, positing these works as both image and event.

 

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Message Received is accompanied by a zine of the same name that brings together the sketches, drawings, and watercolors that document New-York based artist Eleanor Swordy’s process of making her monumental painting titled My Ophelia (2024). The publication is the first to offer visual insight into this otherwise private aspect of the artist’s practice.