For the fall exhibition, 214 Projects in River Bend will present Arrival, Departure, Arrival a solo show of work by Ludwig Schwarz opening October 12. The exhibition will explore temporality with Schwarz’s paintings working in collaboration with the specific nature of the project space and more specifically 214 Projects.
Schwarz has a history of exhibiting painting as an equal player in situational settings, functioning with a variety of media in context-specific, open narratives. Still, painting itself remains significant to Schwarz’s overall practice, all the while knowing that once out in the world, painting is on its own.
Brandon Kennedy remarks on Schwarz, “Ludwig and I met in 1995 when I was installing his first solo exhibition at the McKinney Avenue Contemporary, having recently moved back to Dallas after completing his Masters at the School of Visual Arts in New York. After the Dallas Museum of Art had acquired a suite of eight paintings of his last year, I wrote a STUDIO profile on Ludwig in Patron and was slightly befuddled (moreover, intrigued) as to what to make of the ten paintings he had in his studio at the time. Much like the circular logic laid out in the title of the exhibition, I couldn’t more excited to present 214 Projects first show working with both Dallas-based Conduit Gallery and artist-provocateur Ludwig Schwarz after seeing his work (and sense of humor) evolve over two decades of artmaking and friendship here.”
Last year, Schwarz’s Untitled (series of eight paintings) were acquired by and exhibited at the Dallas Museum of Art. The abstract compositions of identically scaled paintings represent a variety of styles, from the geometric to the painterly, and in sequence, they resemble a row of icons. The paintings were first shown in the solo exhibition Desktop at Conduit Gallery, and were joined by sculptures comprising found objects, video, and text-based work in an immersive installation. The show’s title provided a helpful metaphor with which to understand the paintings. Desktops, be they physical or digital, act as portals to the tools and visual information we use to create and understand our world.
Kennedy breaks down Schwarz’s exhibition title: “As 214 Projects is an extension of the Dallas Art Fair’s programming, Ludwig took the opportunity to poke at the art fair model in its own cage—both in a spatial sense (booths, signage, art handling/shipping supplies) as well as the bustling hubbub that surrounds a fair and its gallerists, collectors and advisors. FOMO and JOMO pass each other at the coffee cart on the way to their departing flight to the next expected art world to-do, whether fair, biennial or blockbuster goings-on. Additionally, Ludwig closes a show of sculptural installation at Conduit the day his exhibition at 214 Projects opens, so there’s another analogy as well.”
In Arrival, Departure, Arrival viewers can expect Schwarz to play on the exhibition title with a bit of humor and introspection. The exhibition centered around a suite of ten paintings presented by Conduit Gallery: eight hung in a booth with two waiting nearby in limbo. In the adjacent but much smaller booth, Mai Koetjecacov Editions from Wichita Falls will present one work by Schwarz and smaller works by Victor Offen.