Julianne Swartz

Julianne Swartz (born 1967) is a New York-based artist. She is known for immersive installations, architectural interventions and sculptures that bring sound, optics and kinetics into play to create alternative, multisensory experiences.Ganis, William V. "Julianne Swartz, Indianapolis Museum of Art," ''Sculpture'', May 2015.Walker-Billaud, Mathilde
"Sculpting the Uncanny: Julianne Swartz,"
''Bomb'', January 2, 2019. Retrieved May 8, 2023.Browne, Alix
"New Art on the High Line,"
''The New York Times'', June 7, 2011. Retrieved May 8, 2023. She uses utilitarian materials (e.g., tubes, mirrors, lenses, magnets) to warp, reshape or deepen perception, generating unexpected, ephemeral and participatory experiences out of common situations.Schwendener, Martha
"Julianne Swartz,"
''Artforum'', February 2002. Retrieved May 5, 2023.Pearlman, Ellen
"From da 'Hood to da Whitney: 3 Artists from Williamsburg Make Good,"
''The Brooklyn Rail'', March 2004. Retrieved May 8, 2023.Reiman, Joshua. "The Shape of Sound: A Conversation with Julianne Swartz," ''Sculpture'', May 2017, p. 44–51. Critics suggest that her work inhabits liminal areas, both literally (transitory architectural spaces and functional systems) and conceptually, bridging the perceptible and evanescent, public and private, visual and embodied, affective and technical.Tikhonova, Yulia. "Julianne Swartz," ''Sculpture'', January/February 2010.Banai, Nuit
"Julianne Swartz,"
''Artforum'', December 2012. Retrieved May 8, 2023. ''Art in America '' critic Peter R. Kalb wrote, "Swartz appeals to the senses and emotions with a quiet lyricism, using unassuming materials and marshaling grand forces like wind and magnetism" to offer "a thoughtful excursion into sound, sight and psyche."Kalb, Peter R. "Julianne Swartz, deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum," ''Art in America'', February 2013.

Swartz has exhibited at institutions including the Whitney Museum,Smith, Roberta
"Funky Digs With Lots of Space for Performance-Oriented Hipsters,"
''The New York Times'', September 28, 2001. p. E39. Retrieved May 5, 2023. MoMA PS1,Labelle, Charles. "Julianne Swartz," ''Frieze'', March 2005. Tate Liverpool,Key, Philip. "Art that talks to you," ''Daily Post'', August 21, 2006. Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (Mass MoCA)Smee, Sebastian
"At Mass MoCA, wondering about wonder,"
''The Boston Globe'', June 23, 2016. Retrieved May 8, 2023. and Israel Museum, Jerusalem.Israel Museum, Jerusalem
"Good Night,"
Exhibitions. Retrieved May 8, 2023. She has been recognized by the Foundation for Contemporary Arts,Foundation for Contemporary Arts
Julianne Swartz
Recipients. Retrieved May 5, 2023. Joan Mitchell Foundation,Joan Mitchell Foundation
Julianne Swartz
Artists. Retrieved May 5, 2023. American Academy of Arts and Letters,Klopfenstein, Karley
"American Academy of Arts and Letters Announces New Members and Award Recipients,"
''Artcritical'', April 14, 2010. Retrieved May 5, 2023. and Anonymous Was a Woman.Anonymous Was a Woman
Recipients
Retrieved May 5, 2023.

Swartz lives in Stone Ridge, New York with her husband, Ken Landauer.SUNY New Paltz
"Celebrate Hudson Valley art and artists at the Dorsky,"
News, April 22, 2011. Retrieved May 8, 2023.

Education and career

Swartz was born in Phoenix, Arizona in 1967. She studied poetry, receiving a BA in creative writing and photography from the University of Arizona in 1989, before attending the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (1999) and Bard College, where she earned an MFA in sculpture in 2003.MacAdam, Barbara A. "Magnetic Resonances," ''ARTnews'', February 2005. Her mother, Beth Ames Swartz, is an established artist known for paintings and mixed-media works that explore light, spirituality, healing and feminist themes.Rubin, David, Arlene Raven and Eva Schlein Jungermann
'' Reminders of Invisible Light: The Art of Beth Ames Swartz''
New York: Hudson Hills Press, 2002. Retrieved May 8, 2023.

Swartz received early attention for artworks exploring visual perception and the act of looking, exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum of Art,Levin, Kim. "Choices: Art," ''The Village Voice'', April 20, 1997. Islip Art Museum,Harrison, Helen A
"Beyond 'Eeeww!': A World of Insects and Spiders,"
''The New York Times'', February 13, 2000. Retrieved May 5, 2023. SculptureCenterSmith, Roberta
"Funky Digs With Lots of Space for Performance-Oriented Hipsters,"
''The New York Times'', September 28, 2001. p. E39. Retrieved May 5, 2023. and Artists SpaceScott, Andrea. "Project Spaces," ''The New Yorker'', March 31, 2003. between 1997 and 2003.Heartney, Eleanor. "Brooklyn! At the Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art," ''Art in America'', April 2002, p. 157. In 2002, ''The Brooklyn Rail'' characterized her installation at Schroeder Romero involving a garden, mirrors, lenses and glass as ephemeral and painterly, "inhabit ngthe everyday, transforming it, however briefly, into something poetic."Powhida, William
"Sci-Fi and Gardens: Susan Graham and Julianne Swartz,"
''The Brooklyn Rail'', October 2002. Retrieved May 8, 2023.Honigman, Ana Finel. "Susan Graham, Julianne Swartz," ''Sculpture'', January–February 2003. Her first project to emphasize participants was ''Link/Line'' (2001), created for the Susquehanna Art Museum in response to a series of local hate crimes including the burning of an under-construction synagogue.Lewis, Zachary. "A thread of tolerance," ''The Patriot-News'', April 18, 2001. It consisted of a continuous, 4.5-mile red sewing thread running from the museum through businesses, synagogues, churches, shops and homes and ending at a Jewish community center; its members agreed to "host" and watch over the thread, inspired by a symbolic practice called an eruv.

In 2003, Swartz broadened her perceptual interests to sound and emotional memory, seeking to extend audience engagement with her work. She gained wide recognition for sonic installations at the Whitney Biennial, New Museum (both 2004) and the Liverpool Biennial (Tate Liverpool, 2006).Kennedy, Randy
"The New Museum's New Non-Museum,"
''The New York Times'', July 25, 2004, sect. 2, p. 2. Retrieved May 5, 2023.Graeber, Laurel

''The New York Times'', July 30, 2004, p. E37. Retrieved May 5, 2023. Later solo exhibitions have taken place at the Jewish Museum (2009), Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland (2011), Oude Kerk, Amsterdam (2013) and Institute for Contemporary Art, Richmond (2019), among other venues.''The New Yorker''. "Jewish Museum," March, 2008.School of Visual Arts
Julianne Swartz
Faculty. Retrieved May 5, 2023.Institute for Contemporary Art, Richmond
" Julianne Swartz, Sine Body,"
Exhibitions. Retrieved May 8, 2023. A mid-career survey of her work, "How Deep is Your," traveled from the deCordova Museum (2012) to the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art (2013) and Indianapolis Museum of Art (2014).Carlock, Marty. "Julianne Swartz, deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum," ''Sculpture'', January/February 2013.

In addition to her artmaking, Swartz has been a member of the art faculty at Bard College since 2006 and previously taught at the Skowhegan School of Art and in the MFA program at the School of Visual Arts.Bard College
Julianne Swartz
Faculty. Retrieved May 5, 2023.

Work and reception

Swartz's work has centered on site-specific sonic and optical installations, sculpture and photographs. Her sound works have used low-tech and more sophisticated technologies to disperse music, recorded messages and ambient sound through large, multi-floor and multi-location sites, crossing dimensions of space and time. The optical installations often use lenses, mirrors and tubes to displace space and suggest a sense of perception in flux.Smee, Sebastian. "Works as fragile as how we see ourselves," ''The Boston Globe'', September 15, 2012. Her often-minimal sculpture frequently employs optics, sound and kinetics.Hanley, Bill. "Humanizing Time," ''Rhizome'', May 28, 2007.MacAdam, Barbara A
"Vasari Diary: Julianne Swartz, Munch Meets Schoenberg at the Met, and Artists Playing With Dolls,"
''ARTnews'', January 2, 2018. Retrieved May 5, 2023.

Sound installations

For her first sound work, ''How Deep is Your'' (2003, MoMA PS1), Swartz connected speakers in the space's basement through PVC pipe to a large blue amplifying funnel on its top floor. The funnel emitted a faint overlay of the songs " How Deep Is Your Love" (the Bee Gees) and "Love" (John Lennon) that also leaked out on the journey up. For ''Somewhere Harmony'' (2004, Whitney Biennial), she piped layered recordings of people singing and speaking "Over the Rainbow" through clear tubes outfitted with mirrors and lenses along grooves in the museum's five-story stairwell, where it mixed with ambient sound.Gopnik, Blake. "Julianne Swartz," ''The Washington Post'', March 14, 2004, p. N06. The piece tied visitors and various spaces together with interspersed sound, reflections of movement throughout the stairwell, and nostalgia activated by the song.Weyland, Jocko. "American Splendor," ''TimeOut New York'', March 4–11, 2004. ''Can You Hear Me'' (2004, New Museum) offered a participatory experience that crossed physical, sensory and social boundaries, joining art viewers and residents of the neighboring Sunshine Hotel—the Bowery's last transient hotel.Markus, David. "Telephoning From Skid Row," ''NYArts'', October 1, 2004. A bright yellow plastic conduit equipped with mirrors served as an auditory and optical periscope, enabling visitors and passersby to peek into the hotel's lounge area and engage residents in conversation.Moynihan, Colin
"Exhibit Offers a Peek Inside the Lives of Outsiders,"
''The New York Times'', August 1, 2004. Retrieved May 5, 2023.''The New Yorker''. "Julianne Swartz," October 25, 2004.

In several acoustic installations, Swartz presented intimate spoken messages that "seeped" out of hidden speakers (''Affirmation'', 2006, Liverpool Biennial) or surrounded visitors in tapestries of sound, blurring notions of public and private.Johnson, Ken

''The New York Times'', August 19, 2011. Retrieved May 5, 2023. ''Terrain'' (2008, Indianapolis Museum of Art) was an immersive installation of 208 speakers strung from the ceiling of a large lobby. Visitors heard tender, whispered utterances by human voices orchestrated into a moving soundscape akin to wind, breaking surf or rustling leaves, which suggested the transience of affection, want and pleasure.Weiner, Emily
"Julianne Swartz,"
''Artforum'', February 2009. Retrieved May 8, 2023.Kwon, Liz. "Art & Space: Julianne Swartz," ''BOB International Magazine of Space Design'', November 2011, p. 128–33. The public work, ''Digital Empathy'' (2011–12, High Line Park, Manhattan) employed computer-generated voices emitted from elevators, drinking fountains and restrooms, whose messages ''The New York Times'' described as "intentionally subtle and hilariously mixed … equal parts infomercial, public service announcement and motivational mantra."Walsh, Brienne
"New Voices: Animal Instincts for the Highline,"
''Art in America'', June 12, 2011. Retrieved May 8, 2023. The commissioned public bench installation ''We Complete'' (2017, Cambridge Common) used speakers activated by visitors—in this case, people holding hands—to play quotes about interdependence voiced by children.Arnett, Dugan. "In Cambridge, an inspiring reason to hold hands," ''The Boston Globe'', June 2, 2017. For the long-term installation ''In-Harmonicity, the Tonal Walkway'' (2016–ongoing, Mass MOCA), Swartz integrated a 20-channel, non-narrative soundscape of single sung notes and spoken text spoken into a footbridge.

Her ''Sine Body'' (2017, Museum of Art and Design) featured 18 glass and ceramic "Re-Sounding Vessels" that amplified, conducted and emitted a specific tone generated through an electronic feedback process based on the shape and air volume of each vessel. In 2018, she created the sound installation ''Joy, Still'' at Grace Farms, which turned the site's amphitheater into an instrument, using elements embedded beneath the floor that created sound and physical vibrations; Lilly Wei described the 16-channel composition, which included people's thoughts about joy, as a "symphony of voices, hums, thrums, the aural assuming a corporeal presence."Wei, Lilly
"Julianne Swartz interview – 'Joy is also talking about sorrow and despair, so we will know what joy is,'"
''Studio International'', January 13, 2019. Retrieved May 8, 2023.

Optical installations

Swartz's optical works date back to her early career; she recreated two of them for her "How Deep Is Your" exhibitions. ''Excavation'' (2004/2012) featured transparent winding tubes suspended from clear cylindrical columns that led to a rough hole and crack in a wall through which viewers could see a small, intense rainbow. For ''Line Drawing'' (2004/2012), she ran thin blue tape across walls and in and out of orifices that viewers could peer into, where it seemed to grow and thin in distorted three-dimensional space before entering another hole.

''Blue Sky with Rainbow'' (2016) is a long-term work that uses lenses and fiber-optic cable to harness sunlight from the roof of the Art Gallery of Western Australia; it emits a bright beam inside the museum near the entry and—after entering a cavity behind a wall—meets a prism and fills the interior space with an ever-shifting rainbow. In the permanent New York Percent for Art commission, ''Four Directions From Hunters Point'' (2019), Swartz embedded four circular optical portals in the walls and roof of a Queens library designed by Steven Holl.Queens Public Library
"Hunters Point Library Opens in Queens,"
News. September 24, 2019. Retrieved May 5, 2023. The portals generate abstract views of the site and its idyllic surroundings and mirror the library's function of transporting visitors to new perspectives; the installation received a New York City Public Design Commission award for Excellence in Design.

Sculpture and photographs

Swartz's sculpture has more often emphasized optical effects involving perceptual displacement, physical sensation, motion, time and balance. In solo exhibitions between 2004 and 2007, she presented a range of such work: forest-like constructions of fiber-optic cables, PVC pipe, mirrors, magnifiers and periscopes offering refracted and reflected views; photographs of bubbles, water drops and mirrors capturing dislocated skyscapes and landscapes; and delicate studies in visual tension, such as ''Spectrum'', a rainbow of magnets attached to wires that arced from the wall and rose from the floor.Susser, Deborah Sussman. "Julianne Swartz," ''Art in America'', November 2006. ''Artforums Martha Schwendener characterized them as "aligned with older ideas and technologies: the imagined single viewer of one-point perspective, the camera obscura, or the stereoscope … here'san enduring sense of wonder at the beauty and strangeness still achievable with optical and sonic tricks."

In subsequent series, Swartz used delicate forms and movements and precariousness to convey pathos and human emotion.''The New Yorker''
"Julianne Swartz,"
May 28, 2007.Saltz, Jerry. "Julianne Swartz," ''New York Magazine'', June 11–18, 2012.Weiner, Emily. "Julianne Swartz," ''TimeOut New York'', June 28, 2007.Baker, R.C. "Julianne Swartz," ''The Village Voice'', May 22, 2007. "Hope Studies" (2007) comprised eight simple, quivering assemblages with ticking clock mechanisms embedded in concrete that activated imperceptible, insistent movements of wire and string.Hall, Emily
"Julianne Swartz,"
''Artforum'', September 2007. Retrieved May 8, 2023.Nahas, Dominique. "Julianne Swartz," ''Sculpture'', May 2008. ''Rhizome'' critic Bill Hanley wrote, "Resembling weeds growing up from their inert brutalist bases, the series … measures seconds in figurative gestures that evoke human fragility in the face of passing time." Her "Stability Studies" (2012) featured carefully balanced structures that seemed to defy gravity, while "Surrogates" (2012) consisted of stacked cement-and-mica blocks with concealed clock motors, whose dimensions corresponded to those of Swartz, her husband and her daughter; their erratic ticking evoked heartbeats and time bombs, suggesting the notion of family as a precarious balancing act.''The New Yorker''. "Julianne Swartz," June 3, 2012.

In her "Bone Scores" (2016) and "Void Weaves" (2017), Swartz created works of wire, paper, ceramic, nets and magnets that translated inaudible audio recordings (e.g., of breathing, a Geiger counter, a rainstorm, fireworks) into vibration and gesture. Within each work, coiled wire carrying electrical current stimulated magnets to produce periodic shudders and vibrations that Marjorie Welish wrote, were "dissonant with respect to the loveliness of the visual elements as initially encountered."Welish, Marjorie
"Wired for Sound: Julianne Swartz at Josée Bienvenu,"
''Artcritical'', December 30, 2017. Retrieved May 8, 2023.

Awards and collections

Swartz has been recognized with fellowships and awards from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Anonymous Was a Woman, UrbanGlass,UrbanGlass
Julianne Swartz
Visiting Artists. Retrieved May 5, 2023. American Academy of Arts and Letters, Joan Mitchell Foundation, New York Foundation for the Arts,New York Foundation for the Arts
"Artists News: Only a Few More Sleeps…,"
December 18, 2015. Retrieved May 5, 2023. Public Art Fund and Bronx Museum of the Arts,Bronx Museum of the Arts
Past Fellows
Retrieved May 5, 2023. among others. She has received artist residencies from Cité internationale des arts, Art Omi and Skowhegan.Cité internationale des arts
Julianne Swartz
Retrieved May 5, 2023.Art Omi
Julianne Swartz
Residents. Retrieved May 5, 2023.

Her work belongs to the public collections of the Art Gallery of Western Australia,Art Gallery of Western Australia
''Blue Sky with Rainbow''
Exhibitions. Retrieved May 5, 2023. Colby College Museum of Art,Colby College Museum of Art
Julianne Swartz
Collections. Retrieved May 5, 2023. deCordova Museum, Indianapolis Museum of Art,Indianapolis Museum of Art
''Terrain'', Julianne Swartz
Artwork. Retrieved May 5, 2023. MASS MoCA,Mass MoCA
Julianne Swartz, ''In Harmonicity, The Tonal Walkway''
Retrieved May 5, 2023. Phoenix Art Museum,Phoenix Art Museum
Julianne Swartz
Retrieved May 23, 2023. and Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art.Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art
Julianne Swartz
Collections. Retrieved May 5, 2023.

References

External links

Julianne Swartz official websiteJulianne Swartz interview
''Studio International'', 2019
Julianne Swartz interview
''Bomb'', 2019
Julianne Swart, ''In Harmonicity, The Tonal Walkway''
MASS MoCA
Julianne Swartz
Bienvenu Steinberg & J, New York
Julianne Swartz
Lisa Sette Gallery, Phoenix, AZ

{{DEFAULTSORT:Swartz, Julianne
1967 births
Living people
American digital artists
American women digital artists
American new media artists
American sound artists
Women sound artists
Jewish American artists
Jewish women artists
American installation artists
Artists from Phoenix, Arizona
Sculptors from New York (state)
University of Arizona alumni
American women installation artists
Bard College faculty
Sculptors from Arizona
21st-century American women sculptors
21st-century American sculptors
American women academics
21st-century American Jews
Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture alumni