Francesca Schwartz
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I am interested in the word, the image, the symbol. I am in love with bone. I am fascinated with the body and the end. The body is an impermanent landscape which we cannot truly know until we have also contemplated its disappearance. Part of this encounter rests on inhabiting my body as a woman. The blood flows mysteriously and then departs, marking seasonality. I meditate on corporeality and femaleness. Always the questions: What does the body retain? What is encrypted? What is memorialized? I am drawn to elements of bone, dye, chiffon, paper, wood, and found objects. I like some materials for their precision, others because of their elusiveness. Once in hand, alchemy takes over, and what happens is unexpected. So it goes, as the unconscious emerges. I tear apart, unravel, and desecrate in an effort to get to the center. I collage to bring cohesion to what feels fragmented. I assemble what is fragmented within myself and those I have lost. I devour. I cannibalize. I resurrect. By altering and reassembling the image, I encounter the space between longing and loss, memory and erasure, permanence and dissipation. I inscribe experience, even as it recedes. The body is inscribed; the word is written. We linger in some ways, yet we are destined to vanish. I bear witness while I am here.
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Francesca Schwartz, PhD, is a New York based artist and practicing psychoanalyst. Her work has been shown in several solo shows including “Inscription” at Mu Gallery in Chicago (June 2022); “Inscription” at M.David & Co. Gallery in Brooklyn (February 2021); and “The Space Between” at Studio 1608 in Miami (November 2018); and group shows including “Space 1,” at La Sapienza University in Rome (March 2022); “Between States” at M.David & Co. Gallery (September 2022); “Arrested Heart,” at Postcards from the Edge, New York (February 2019); “Winds over Haiti,” Hampton’s Artists for Haiti, Southampton, New York (June 2018); “Prayer,” New York School of the Arts, New York; and “Female,” the National Academy Museum & School, (October 2017). Her work appears on Artsy.com and has been included in the publications ROOM 2.18 (November 2020) and Women United ART MAGAZINE (May 2022). Several of her of her residencies have culminated in group exhibitions at the M.David & Co. Gallery in Brooklyn. She has shown recurrently at the Lichtundfire Gallery in New York, including “A Whiter Shade of Pale” (January 2023); “Out of Bounds” (October 2022); “Speed of Light” (June 2022); and “Featherweight” (May 2022). Schwartz has an upcoming solo exhibition at Strati D’Arte Gallery in Rome in June of 2023.
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Website: francescaschwartz.com
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