Contributed by Michael Brennan / Magenta Plains is located on the Bowery, just as it breaks left onto Canal Street, in Chinatown. Upon entering, viewers are immediately greeted by a washy terre verte Jane Swavely painting, OID #3 Green, hanging above the desk. It sets an organic tone and is indicative of the half-dozen paintings to follow, hanging in the first-floor main gallery. Swavely’s seven canvases are all vertical, and are mostly diptychs, internalized or externalized. They are loosely painted with a 2- to 2 ½-inch flat brush, heavy on the solvent, with some wiping away by hand. Much color mixing happens directly on the surface. Swavely favors flared, phosphorescent hues. She cleverly manipulates paint with rags to create the illusion of light emitting from the ground. Her work glows, appearing backlit. Mark Rothko would often talk about the effects of his timeworn brushes, but Milton Resnick revealed that Rothko secretly rendered most of his effects through wiping, adding and subtracting with rags. Swavely is after a different visual feel but employs similar means.
Swavely’s paintings begin and end in media res, that is, in the middle of the action. There’s not much distinction between background and foreground, underpainting and finish, beginning and end. She prefers her work to appear “super fresh” and not “labored,” as she noted in a 2022 Two Coats of Paint interview. I prefer paintings that err on the side of unfinished as opposed to overworked. Sharon Butler explored this tension in some depth in connection with the MetBreuer exhibition “Unfinished: Thoughts Left Visible” in 2016. For anyone skeptical of the preference, I offer two Manet paintings of French prime minister Georges Clemenceau:
Is the more finished painting on the right actually better? I think the less finished one is the livelier of the pair, and Swavely makes a strong argument for leaving well enough alone. It takes considerable maturity for any artist to recognize when the time is right to step out of a painting, and then simply to stop.
Paintings, of course, embody the artist’s lineage. Swavely’s might begin with Olga Rozanova and run through Moira Dryer.
Her two diptychs, with their internalized fissure and doubly gnashing edges, recall Barnett Newman’s notion of “The Plasmic Image” and Günther Förg’s post-modern reboots with their lightning bolt drop.
Swavely is most adept in her use of silver paint and finds an extraordinary range of value between light and dark in this color. Silver paint – in particular, metallic aluminum paint – has a long history in “American Type Painting,” beginning with Jackson Pollock and running through to Frank Stella and Andy Warhol. Swavely’s use of silver is closer to Warhol’s Hollywood silver-screen mode. Many contemporary painters, such as Jacqueline Humphries, likewise use silver as a media signifier. Reinforcing Swavely’s reference to cinema is the narrow profile of her stretchers, which nearly sink into the wall, unlike the blocky, more object-like presence of standard heavy-duty stretchers. Swavely considers all interpretations.
John Millei is another contemporary painter who is accomplished at parsing silver, but his acrylic work is flatter and less nuanced than Swavely’s oil paint, with its lively interplay of light.
Finally, I appreciate that Swavely, a longtime Bowery denizen, is showing in her own neighborhood. It anchors the context of her abstraction, the Bowery being home at one time or another to its own distinctive subset of New York School artists, including Rothko, Cy Twombly, Eva Hesse, Robert Ryman, and Brice Marden. Swavely is pushing the same line, kicking some life into a storied tradition, moving it forward, and keeping it super fresh with modernist painting that raises questions and possibilities rather than enclosing itself in quotations and remaining categorically frozen.
“Jane Swavely: Paintings,” Magenta Plains, 149 Canal Street, New York, NY. Through February 24, 2024.
About the author: Michael Brennan is a Brooklyn based painter who writes on art.
Great review. Just went and saw the show.
Thank you for writing about it.
Really responded to all the historical links and images in this review of Jane’s work. Puts her wrk in the larger context in which it deserves. Thx for the research and the writing
Very nice paintings, the contrast between the different hues and silver hold up very well. Also, Brennan mentions the unfinished, which is also a nice touch to the paintings and something often disputed.
Loved this review and the images and went out to see the show the same day.
Beautiful paintings, wonderfully installed with lots of space around each.
Thank you!
Inspiring review. Especially enjoyed how you put the work in context.
Thank you for this thorough thoughtful review of Jane Swavely’s paintings as they sit alongside the other painters you reference. A refreshing take on fresh paintings.
very good reading and paintings thank you both!
Thanks for putting some great writing around these works. Looking forward to the talk with Jane and. Andrew Woolbright as a follow up to this on Tuesday.