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Spencer Sweeney
Faces
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.
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Spencer Sweeney in his studio, New York, 2020. Artwork © Spencer Sweeney. Photo: Pete Sieper
Related News
Online Reading
Urs Fischer and Spencer Sweeney
Headz
The first volume of Urs Fischer and Spencer Sweeney: Headz is available for online reading from December 7 through January 5 as part of Artist Spotlight: Spencer Sweeney. Housed in a screenprinted box, this eighteen-volume collection brings together the vibrant and varied drawings made during HEADZ NYC—a weekly gathering of food, music, and creativity hosted by Urs Fischer, Spencer Sweeney, and Brendan Dugan between October 2017 and July 2018 in New York’s Chinatown. Interspersed among the artworks are photos of the participants and the space of creative collaboration they activated.
Urs Fischer and Spencer Sweeney: Headz (New York: Kiito-San, 2019)
Artist Spotlight
Spencer Sweeney
December 7–13, 2022
Spencer Sweeney has been a vital presence in the art, nightlife, and music scenes of New York for more than twenty years. In addition to making paintings, drawings, and collages characterized by infectious exuberance and raw materiality, Sweeney produces multimedia environments that transform gallery spaces into open workshops and performance stages. Combining the extemporaneous vigor of Neo-Expressionism with the knowing repetition of signature motifs, the artist’s portraits, self-portraits, and reclining nudes reverberate with references to both popular culture and art history.
Photo: Pete Sieper
Online Reading
Spencer Sweeney
Spencer Sweeney is available for online reading from December 7 to January 5 as part of Artist Spotlight: Spencer Sweeney. At over five hundred pages, this large volume showcases the multifaceted artist’s role as an indelible and essential part of New York City’s cultural landscape for over two decades. In addition to reproductions of hundreds of Sweeney’s colorful paintings, the book features conversations between the artist and some of his friends with long-standing roots in the city’s music and art scenes, including Larry Clark, Natasha Lyonne, Glenn O’Brien, and Kembra Pfahler, as well as archival photographs that capture both legendary and obscure moments from throughout his career.
Spencer Sweeney (New York: Kiito-San, 2015)
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