February 19 - April 2, 2022
From Conduit Gallery:
“Though not didactic, Ludwig Schwarz’s paintings compel the viewer to consider not only the composition on the picture plane, but what exists outside the boundaries of the canvas. His paintings defy expectations by interrupting serene color fields with rhythmic patterns ensconced along the edges of the image. Likewise, Schwarz’s situationally narrative installations operate by asking the viewer to consider not only the painting they are looking at, but where that painting is located, what else is there and what is not there. To that end, Moving Pictures may be the most straightforward of Ludwig Schwarz exhibitions, but it’s not. The exhibition Moving Pictures includes a series of small scale oil paintings on canvas, a welcome and identifiably Schwarzian comment on the outer possibilities of painting, as well as an eight canvas polyptych titled Moving Pictures. Each painting measures 76 inches by 40 inches and as Schwarz notes, is “scaled to the American flag”. The idea for the monumental work found Schwarz when, as he notes, he was “testing red, white and blue spray enamels” on 8 x 10 inch canvases. Always on the lookout for a possible Great Moment in Painting (Great Moments in Painting #’s 2 through 5 having been discovered by the artist intermittently and without warning over the past 20 plus years), the artist, whose work contemplates the “not there-ness” of painting, coupled with a year marked with loss both personal and universal – the moment came together as the small gesture paintings were moved, revealing pristine white rectangles in the negative spaces on the backing underneath them. The feeling of loss is one that is both collective and personal. Schwarz’s rectangular voids suggest traces of what was once there that now is gone or even perhaps was never brought to existence. Encountering the assembly of non-pictures, the viewer is left to fill in the blanks or simply to acknowledge them.
Born in Dallas, TX, Ludwig Schwarz earned a BFA from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, TX and an MFA at the School of Visual Arts New York. Recent exhibitions include; Arrival, Departure, Arrival, 214 Projects, Dallas, TX (2019); Untitled (series of eight paintings), The Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX (2018); Some Twenty Year Old Works on Paper and Two New Sculptures, The Box Company, Dallas, TX (2017); Rudolph Blume Fine Art/Artscan, Houston, TX (2017); Rest Stop, Makebish, New York, NY (2015); Encounters, Lump, Raleigh, N.C. (2015); Ludwig Schwarz: Retrospective (1990–2014), Oliver Francis Gallery, Dallas, TX (2014); the 2012 and 2010 Brucennial, NY; Galerie Carolyn Heinz, Hamburg, Germany (2011); Middle Age, Leo Castelli Gallery, NY (2011); Re-Seeing the Contemporary: Selected from the Collection, Dallas Museum of Art (2010); The New Authentics, The Spertus Museum, Chicago, IL and The Rose Art Museum of Brandeis University, Walthum, MA (2008) and Road Agent Gallery, Dallas, TX (2007); Drunk vs Stoned, Gavin Brown at Passerby, New York, NY (2004); Video Flash, Hohenthal und Bergen, Cologne, Germany (1997); American Fine Arts, Co., New York, NY (1994 & 1989); Secret Agent Artist, PS 1, Long Island City, NY (1994); New Generations New York, Carnegie Mellon Art Gallery, Pittsburgh, PA (1991). Ludwig Schwarz lives and works in Dallas, Texas.”
Reception: February 19, 2022 | 5–7 pm
1626 C Hi Line
Dallas, 75207 TX
(214) 939-0064
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