Julianne Swartz
[4][5][6] 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.
[7][1][8] 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.
[11] 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.
[30][42] 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.
[43][44] 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.
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.
[6][39][15] In the permanent New York Percent for Art commission, Four Directions From Hunters Point (2019), Swartz embedded four circular optical portals in the walls and roof of a Queens library designed by Steven Holl.
[44][20][52][1] Artforum's Martha Schwendener characterized them as "aligned with older ideas and technologies: the imagined single viewer of one-point perspective, the camera obscura, or the stereoscope … [there's] an enduring sense of wonder at the beauty and strangeness still achievable with optical and sonic tricks.
[57][58] Rhizome critic Bill Hanley wrote, "Resembling weeds growing up from their inert brutalist bases, the series … measures seconds in figurative gestures that evoke human fragility in the face of passing time.
[9][59][8] In her "Bone Scores" (2016) and "Void Weaves" (2017), Swartz created works of wire, paper, ceramic, nets and magnets that translated inaudible audio recordings (e.g., of breathing, a Geiger counter, a rainstorm, fireworks) into vibration and gesture.
Within each work, coiled wire carrying electrical current stimulated magnets to produce periodic shudders and vibrations that Marjorie Welish wrote, were "dissonant with respect to the loveliness of the visual elements as initially encountered.
