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Marx & Zavattero

November 6 - December 25, 2008

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77 Geary Street 2nd Floor San Francisco, CA 94108
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The Impact Curve Remnant Horizon, acrylic on canvas, 2007
Opening reception for the artist: Thursday November 6, 5:30 – 7:30 PM Marx & Zavattero are delighted to present The Impact Curve, William Swanson’s fourth solo exhibition at the gallery, from November 6 - December 24, 2008. The Oakland, CA artist is well known for creating abstract acrylic paintings where nature and technology fuse. His signature retro-palette reveals a challenging myriad of colors and imagery that allude to a futuristic fusion of organic and man-made landscapes. These new and unique compositions continue to mark Swanson as a visionary voice in contemporary abstract painting. Swanson’s most recent paintings focus on isolated masses or scapes that seem to hover in space, suggesting lost relics of a civilization where industrial sites teeter on collapse next to areas of pure nature yet to be consumed. Swanson is a master of spatial allusion, creating multiple viewpoints that are luxurious by way of stimulating the eye to wander within and throughout his paintings. His sense of decay, evocations of barren topography, and the aftereffects of global warming hint at a politicized landscape. Liquid pools of black with strange mortar-like forms poking out from a desert floor; a seemingly once-tropical paradise wilting against a smoggy sky; and melting water from a mountain top dripping into a toxic pond of waste are among Swanson’s current thought-provoking images. While the sense of foreboding exists underneath the surface, Swanson’s compositional bravura and high keyed palette make for stunningly beautiful paintings that are as purely about abstraction and sophisticated color relationships as they are about content. In a recent feature on the artist in art ltd. magazine, critic George Melrod writes, “In Swanson’s disorienting hybrid landscapes there is ongoing, ever-shifting conflict between nature and technology, but there is also symbiosis. It’s hard to tell which one is more unsettling.” Swanson has earned a good amount of critical praise over the last several years with reviews in Art In America, ArtNews, The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, Anthem, Artweek, The LA Weekly, and art ltd. He was also featured this year in the important group exhibition Future Tense: Reshaping the Landscape at The Neuberger Museum of Art in Purchase, NY. Swanson has had solo exhibitions at Walter Maciel Gallery, Culver City, CA and DCKT Contemporary, New York, NY. His work was featured in Bay Area Now 3 at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco in 2002/03. Swanson received his BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1992 and currently lives and works in Oakland, CA.
The Impact Curve Site Establishment, acrylic on panel, 2008
The Impact Curve Superstructure Decline, acrylic on panel, 2008