Swoon

by Swoon

This first monograph on the street artist Swoon is a crash course on the incredible range of her diverse artistic practices. Filled with brilliant color photographs, the book brings reader to streets around the world to see her life-size prints and paper cutouts that transform as natural elements slowly erode and destroy them. It travels across the waters to include striking images from her most recent projects, Swimming Cities, which show a team of craftsmen and collaborators scavenging junk to create makeshift steamships that are part floating artwork, part performance, and part experiments in communal living. And it brings readers inside her art collective, Toyshop, which orchestrates organic public theater that includes everything from street parties to public demonstrations. Woven together seamlessly, and accompanied by essays from fellow artists and famed gallery owner Jeffrey Deitch, this book showcases the work of one of the art world’s brightest stars.

Genres: Art, Nonfiction

192 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2008

Reviews

[Kora Kaos · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't even remember, how I stumbled over Swoon, might have been a graffiti in Berlin or Instagram, probably both.. But I'm so glad, I did! And I'm glad I found this book, it kind of enhances the picture I have, it's intriguing to read about the art installations and the boat flotillas.. Such a magical world!

[Jennifer Bacall · Rating 5 out of 5]

Swoon proudly lives life in her own fashion as the leader of a hippie counterculture which includes Freak Folk Music (Coco Rosie, Devandra Banhart, Dark Dark Dark), Black Label Bicycle Club (a fearless and tattooed group from Minnesota known for two-tiered bikes), Freeganism (vegan eaters who eat what they can found that has been discarded in dumpsters or on the street), and an American carnival tradition. But ultimately, Swoon is an artist. She marries her beliefs with the way that she lives. She does most projects in collaboration with dozens of other people. She feels that there is nothing more important than communities working together for a common goal and she utilizes all members for their unique skills.

She is very connected to stories and dreams. The name Swoon came from a dream that a boyfriend of artist Caledonia Curry had. He dreamt that she was successful sharing her work on the streets and she called herself "Swoon". Dreams are one of her main influences on her work and she values them and views them as being as valid as her waking thoughts. "Form follows fiction" is one of her mottos and she confronts the reality of life by juxtaposing fantasy with reality while finding wonder in the overlapping chaos of crowded city spaces and mixed cultures.

The three types of work that figure predominately in this book are her wheat-pasted elaborately cut street art posters, her gallery installations and her strange floating wonderlands. She began on the street, gradually accepted that exhibits were her next natural step and finally fulfilled her ultimate dream projects of creating floating villages.

This book is a gorgeous Abrams publication with high quality picture reproductions printed on matte high bond paper stimulating the sense of feel. It blends anecdotal remembrances from friends, gallery owners and others inspired by or engaged in Swoon's work. It covers Swoons work from 2002 through 2009 so it does not cover her more recent work in New Orleans (on the street or her stunning installation Thalassa at the New Orleans Museum of Art), but it is a thorough and fascinating introduction to a woman that is changing art in America and will be considered a living legend.

[Grady · Rating 4 out of 5]

Making Permanent the Impermanent Art of SWOON

SWOON is the nom de plume of Caledonia "Callie" Dance Curry, a out in the open 'street artist' from New York City who has made her mark on the art world by creating life-size wheatpaste prints and paper cutouts of family and friends going about the very ordinary aspect of daily life, superimposed on her own bizarre yet realistic renderings of bridges, fire escapes, sidewalks. Her works are not created to last: they weather rain and snow and wind and graffiti and the changes that these elements create sometimes enhance the original work. She has created altars, decorated ships, public theater - her influence is ubiquitous in New York and in gallery and building settings and in Berlin and other parts of the world, much to the favor she finds in the hands of Jeffrey Deitch.

This monograph is generous in the number of images created by Swoon and given the fact that her art is by nature temporary, the book saves much of her work for posterity. There are essays accompanying the works - describing her Swimming Cities and Toyshop projects - and while these essays are not always particularly well written they do add flavor that enhances the imagery. The curator of this book is MOCA director Jeffrey Deitch, an important art figure who is currently facing the cloud of censorship for his act of covering a mural placed outside the Los Angeles MOCA facility. This controversy makes reading about Swoon and Deitch's promotion of her while in Deitch Projects in Brooklyn all the more timely!

Grady Harp

[Alison · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is basically a catalogue raisonné of Swoon's work, including her awesome Swimming Cities projects, and the Black Floor show from a few years ago (some of my friends are in the pictures! Weeeee!). My only complaint is that there are very few photos of her wheatpastes that take into account the entire landscape...the rest of the building, for example. I think her work should be seen up close, but also as it relates to the scenery as a whole.