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[ing] the 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. "Family Fare," 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. "Sculptural Surprises Grace the Streets," 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.