![Spencer Sweeney and Edek Bartz](https://gagosian.com/media/images/quarterly/spencer-sweeney-and-edek-bartz-interview/sg6O8gS25vCx_300x300.jpg)
In Conversation
Spencer Sweeney and Edek Bartz
Curator and concert promoter Edek Bartz speaks with the artist about portraiture, album covers, and subverting expectations.
galleryplatform.la
September 24–30, 2020
Sometimes you find a convergent expression of joy and pain, almost in the same breath. This is what interests me.
—Spencer Sweeney
Gagosian is pleased to present paintings and works on paper by Spencer Sweeney online for galleryplatform.la. Curated from several existing bodies of work, the selection centers on the human face as a bearer of expression and a site for visual experimentation.
Sweeney’s paintings, drawings, and collages are alive with the same infectious energy as his multimedia environments, musical performances, and collaborative experiments. In the eight works on view, which were made between 2011 and 2020, the New York–based artist presents a vital and accessible take on the elemental formats of portrait and figure study, viewing them afresh through the mercurial lenses of popular culture and subjective experience. Inspired by the improvisational spirit of jazz, he produces intensely colored, boldly gestural images that reverberate with the amplified and distorted voices of art historical exemplars.
Spencer Sweeney in his studio, New York, 2020. Artwork © Spencer Sweeney. Photo: Pete Sieper
Curator and concert promoter Edek Bartz speaks with the artist about portraiture, album covers, and subverting expectations.
Kembra Pfahler speaks with Sweeney about his work, staying inspired, and the relationship between self-portraiture and performance.
Peter Doig visits Spencer Sweeney’s studio and the two discuss automatism, ambiguity, and anguish in the creative process.
Spencer Sweeney shares a selection of songs that have punctuated his journey through the pandemic and ponders the expressive powers of a playlist.