Swoon Wants to Build a Playable House in New Orleans

Brooklyn-based street artist and art-raft floater Swoon is working on a permanent, public house-sculpture in NoLA’s Bywater neighborhood. Built from the salvaged ruins of a Creole Cottage, it will be rigged to function like a giant musical instrument. Read more »

Cut-out Parts and Shredded Wholes

FAILE Never Enough, acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas

Layers, collages, cut-ups and cut-outs — it’s mixed media madness at Perry Rubenstein Gallery. The group show Shredfeatures Eric Foss’s found vintage vagina face photo mash-ups, a ’50s zoophobic collage by Jess, the Brooklyn duo FAILE‘s mas-tear-piece above and more. Read more »

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See Trash Cities Float in ‘Flood Tide’ Film Tomorrow Night

Come see the world premiere of Todd Chandler’s Flood Tide tomorrow at L.I.C.’s Socrates Sculpture Park as it kicks off its free summer outside cinema series. With a live score by Dark Dark Dark, the film will take you on a semi-fictional adventure on an armada of trash rafts down Hudson River with artists and musicians. Read more »

‘Punk Beasts’ Float ‘Swimming Cities’ Show

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Over the summer, Swoon’s Swimming Cities of Serenissima successfully crashed the Venice Biennale in what art critic Jerry Saltz calls “the most moving moment I had.” Hosted by Anonymous Gallery, a retrospective of this hand built boating expedition takes places at Collective Hardware tonight. Named after the Italian villagers bestowed on the project, “Pankabestia: Punk Beasts of the Swimming Cities of Serenissima” will feature massive wall drawings, trash barge installations, flotsam from the Adriatic Sea and other crew art. See more of Tod Seelie’s photos from the Mediterranean trip below. Read more »

Javier Piñón’s Clean-Cut Collages

The picturesque collages of Javier Piñón’s collages are missing something. The iconic hero, the cowboy, is cut from the frontier landscape, leaving behind a white silhouette to ponder. Tonight, Piñón puts his “Martyrs” series on display with artwork by Swoon, Matthew Lusk and Santiago Mostyn for Drift, a group exhibition exploring the challenges faced by contemporary nomads and travelers. The show opens tonight at Glowlab, which continues to support Swoon’s Swimming Cities of Serennisima with a portion of their proceeds. Drift opens tonight from 7 to 9 PM and will be on display through July 26 at 30 Grand Street in the Lower East Side.

New York Magazine tagged along while Swoon’s Swimming Cities of Serenissima scavenged preparations for their raft journey into Venice for the Bienale. “‘There’s no trust-fund babies here,’ snorts one of the crew, who then covertly disses Dash Snow, the art world’s enfant terrible of just a few years ago. ‘No grandmother on the Upper East Side.’” |New York|

‘Swimming Cities’ Art Rafts Arrive in Venice

Swoon’s Swimming Cities of Serenissima, her latest fleet of handbuilt raft sculptures, launched into the Adriatic Sea in Slovenia and floated into Venice in time for the Biennale. Their safe arrival will be celebrated here in New York with a benefit party at Honey Space, which hosted a subterranean installation by the seafaring street artist last year. A silent auction of artwork by Swoon, Honey Space founder Thomas Beale, and other New York artists will be followed by a party with some Vermont-based bands and booze. Click the images above for a view of the artistically styled watercraft.

Swoon and Tennesse Jane Watson Go Underground for ‘Portrait’


Shrine candles and objects left by visitors. Photo: |C-Monster|
Swoon and Tennessee Jane Watson have collaborated on a new exhibit that pays “tribute to one of the hundreds of poor women that have been brutally murdered in the Mexican border town of Juárez.” To view the ‘Portrait of Silvia Elena,’ gallery-goers must climb down a hole in the floor into a candle-lit, subterranean installation/shrine. Head over to C-Monster to see more eerily captivating images and a much more thorough description of the work. |C-Monster|