"THE BURNING HOUSE"
Faile, Swoon and David Ellis
OPENING JANUARY 20, 2007
January 20 - March 17, 2007
|
|
|

Swoon
photo by Josh White |

Swoon
photo by Josh White |

Swoon
photo by Josh White |
|
|
Faile, Swoon and David Ellis all take their cue from the street. Well renowned individually, their show “The Burning House” will provide a high concentration of talent in collaborations as well as individual works on display. |
Swoon’s intricate paper cutouts have been covering the streets of New York for the past six years with people doing ordinary things –riding bikes, talking on a stoop or going grocery shopping. Her delicate wheatpasted cutouts take inspiration from German Expressionist wood block prints and Indonesian shadow puppets, but infuse a uniquely urban sensibility in the way they become part of the streetscape as they decay over time. Her work has shown at Deitch Projects and P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center in New York, and was also featured in the 2006 Whitney Biennial. |
Growing up in a family of musicians heavily influenced the work of David Ellis, whose “motion paintings” travel through time like music, where beats are orchestrated and translated into colorful, organic paintings. His improvisational wild style sign painting has been a central part of the Barnstormers collective over the years. His works have appeared in public projects in New York, London, and Osaka. |
Faile is a three-person collective based in New York that pulls influences from comic book art, pulp fiction and popular culture. Their work has appeared on the streets all over the world, and at Shanghai’s Tiger Translate, San Francisco’s FIFTY24SF, Zurich’s Les Complices and Berlin’s Neurotitan Haus Schwarzenberge. From enormous wheat paste posters, to three published books, the quality of their work has propelled them from street renegades to some of the best galleries in the art world. |
|
For more on The Burning House at Het Domein please click here: http://www.hetdomein.nl |
|
|
I was recently in L.A. for the weekend and was lucky enough to catch “The Burning House,” a collaborative installation by Faile, Swoon and David Ellis at New Image Art now extended through 17 March 2007. |
Walking into the gallery is overwhelming. Much like Wooster on Spring, Every inch of wall, window, or door has been wheat pasted or painted over. (Click above image for detail.) As your eyes adjust, you start to see that a Swoon fish cut-out intertwines with a David Ellis “motion” painting, which are on top of a Faile sign. A beautiful and cohesive collaboration, it's hard to tell where one artist’s work ends and another begins. |
There also are individual works by each artist. Ellis has cute cut-out and painted trucks, Swoon has a few individual portraits including a striking pregnant woman called, “Zahra” and Faile has an array of their pulp fiction-inspired canvases. See more images here or catch it in in the “Guest Room” of the Museum Hetdomein Sittard the Netherlands starting this May. |
Written by Wendy Dembo |
|
Swoon’s Presentation at MoMA |
|
|
|