Ian L.C. Swordy’s sculptures assume allegorical significance through the innate performativity of the artists’ sourcing of his materials and the physical labor of his process. To make his freestanding works, Swordy often salvages off-cuts and veiny chunks of marble and positions them atop found and hand-carved pieces of wood, concrete, and steel. The resulting works, vaguely anthropomorphised and indebted to industry, nature, and the detritus of city life, evoke a singular strain of punk modernism. His materials, as broad as they are specific, connect his freestanding sculptures with his wall works, assemblages created from accumulative detritus gathered along the artist’s daily walks in New York.

The artist’s own personal history–first, as a member of several bands active in the thriving punk scene on Long Island in the early aughts, and later a performance artist–informs his sculptural work and imbues it with inbuilt contradiction. His objects first appear precariously balanced and physically fleeting, but ultimately prove robust, permanent, and deeply considered. Intensely labored over in an ongoing process of improvisational and intuitive making, the artist’s objects become hauntingly lyrical gutter-poetry.

Ian L.C. Swordy (b. 1982) earned a BFA from Hunter College (2007), and an MFA from Yale University (2009). Recent solo exhibitions include Direct Carving (2024) at Entrance/Red Hook in Brooklyn, NY, Direct Carving (2023) and Hammer Time (2021) at Moskowitz Bayse in Los Angeles. Recent group and two-person exhibitions include a presentation at NADA New York (2022) with Moskowitz Bayse, Taking Flight (2021) at the Berkshire Botanical Gardens, MA organized by Kyle Dewoody, and The Moonlight Works (2019), at Moskowitz Bayse. Swordy’s first two books, The Bull Loving Truth and Will and Grace were published in 2016 and 2020 respectively. He lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

ARTIST’s cv