Tony Swain: Dilemma To Rely On

Gallery Baton is pleased to announce 《Dilemma to Rely On》, a solo exhibition of works by Tony Swain (b. 1967), from 25th April to 25th May in the Hannam-dong space, Seoul. By combining painting with newsprint, he has consistently produced works that challenge the schematized conventional notion of painting and address in-depth questions about the interaction between the originality of adopted images and their subliminal meanings. It is the first solo exhibition by Swain in Seoul, one of the artists who represented Scotland in Venice at the Venice Biennale in 2007.

The collage technique steadily emerged in the visual art at the beginning of the 1900s as Cubism developed. For example, Picasso often attached clippings of newspaper, fabric patches or score sheets directly onto canvas surfaces to underline the properties of the depicted objects in a straightforward manner. Applying non-traditional materials gave a sense of volume, lending impromptu effects to the two-dimensional; furthermore, it played a crucial role in the conceptual enrichment of artworks in addition to forming part of their physical texture. Thus, Picasso, skeptical of the general idea that art was made solely by the artist’s hand, had created an important model for visual art by adopting collage, and it influenced the later movements, such as Dadaism and Surrealism.

While Picasso employed pieces of newspaper texts or objects as a secondary element to remind viewers of his central motif clearly, Swain perceives the cutting fragments as separate pieces of a puzzle and prioritizes the overall scene unfold by arranging and matching them according to his compositional plan. Though abstract aspects stand out partially, the most prominent trait of his recent works is the dynamics of each figurative section that forms part his panoramic scenes. In this context, for Swain's practice, painting does not remain a mere device of connecting boundaries of the parts or occupying empty spaces. It embraces the different sectors of one scene, constructs new narratives at each of them, and attunes the entire plane through the tension created by the contrast of colours and a sensation of speed.

Swain’s ritual—constantly examining the pile of newspaper collected in the studio, cropping them in diverse methods honed over time, clipping them and placing them on a panel—can be differentiated from the other universal methodologies such as collage or Combine painting. Old scraps cropped out of the Guardian, which he reads and keeps every day, are not only a physical foundation, the lowest layer of a work, but incidents and advertisements attached without a source – overlapped and overpainted. Swain does not suggest any additional clues about the sense of distance which appears in the mystic sceneries and images of his works. This enigmatic sensibility is one of the most intriguing features in Swain’s practice because, as the title of the exhibition implies, it unveils the niches between memories and flashbacks, and between sublimity and irony.

About Artist
Tony Swain (b. 1967, Lisburn) lives and works in Glasgow. He received a BFA from the Glasgow School of Art, UK. Selected as one of the artists representing the Scotland Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2007, he has established a solid presence on the international art scene with a following exhibition at Tate Britain in 2009. He has been the subject of numerous exhibitions including Kunstverein Freiburg, DE (2015); Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, UK (2015); and Inverleith House, UK (2008). His work is represented in the collections of Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, UK; Gallery of Modern Art Glasgow, UK; Tate, UK;
The Arts Council Collection, UK; FRAC des Pays de la Loire, FR; MoMA, US; SFMOMA, US.