We’re big fans of Swoon (aka Caledonia Curry), a diverse street artist known for her life-size paste-ups, paper cutouts, and crazy boat-based performance projects. In fact, one of her pieces adorns a wall at Flavorpill HQ. It’s a long story.
As her longtime proponent Jeffrey Deitch explains in the introduction to her new monograph, Swoon’s first street art project was a series of block prints on tracing paper that she put up in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. While that didn’t go so well (according to her at least), it opened the door to more outdoor work; soon she was putting up her hand-painted stickers on news boxes and covering the billboards around Pratt Institute with her paintings. “There was a sensitivity in the rendering of the figure that I was astonished to see on the street,” says Deitch. “It was some of the freshest work I had seen outside in the city since the early 1980s.”
Click through below to view a career-spanning gallery of Swoon’s work thus far — from her portraits to her massive armadas. If you’re in New York, head to Urban Art Projects on Saturday night for a book release and signing, where she’ll be constructing a temporary installation out of the books themselves.
Havana, 2003. Courtesy of Abrams Books
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Brooklyn, 2006. Courtesy of Abrams Books
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Zahra, lineoleum block print in progress, 2006. Courtesy of Abrams Books
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Installation views, Deitch Projects, Manhattan, 2005. Courtesy of Abrams Books
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Installation views, La Boca del Lobo, in collaboration with Polina Soloveichik and Alison Corrie, Black Floor Gallery, Philadelphia, 2006. Courtesy of Abrams Books
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Installation views, PinchukArtCentre, Kiev, Ukraine, 2006. Courtesy of Abrams Books
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The Garden of Bling, Miss Rockaway Armada, 2007. Courtesy of Abrams Books
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Portrait of Silvia Elena, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, 2007. Courtesy of Abrams Books
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Installation views, Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea, Deitch Projects, Long Island City, 2008. Courtesy of Abrams Books
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Old Hickory and the Venetian polices, Swimming Cities of Serenissima, 2009. Courtesy of Abrams Books