PRESENTATION: Grace Schwindt-When a Body Becomes a Landscape

Grace Schwindt works with sculpture, performance, drawing and film. Through her work she unfolds visual narratives that explore the effects of capitalist culture on the body and psyche of the individual. She analyses the role that bodies, language and objects play in the construction of history and memory. Grace Schwindt’s process often originates from specific research and conversations with a wide range of people, including activists, artists, musicians, politicians and her own relatives.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Galerie Peter Kilchmann Archive

Many of Grace Schwindt’s works examine aspects of historical events with an emphasis on social relations. The different media employed are connected and intertwined, shapes from costumes reappearing in drawings while sculptures echo performative gestures. Grace Schwindt presents “When a Body Becomes a Landscape”, her first solo exhibition in Paris. The exhibition features a dynamic interaction of newly conceived paintings and earlier sculptures in glass, ceramics, and bronze. Following the great success of Schwindt’s premiere in Zurich, the Paris exhibition represents a continuation and new perspectives on Schwindt’s engagement with trauma, injury, and the acceptance of these through strategies of tenderness and touch. Inspired by literary critic Edward W. Said, Schwindt advocates for direct human encounters rather than intellectual understanding of cultures from a distance. She seeks to disrupt narratives on humans and bodies based on concepts of separation, instead promoting a history shaped by immediate touch. In doing so, she describes how, beyond our cultural influences, we are inextricably connected to nature, and this primal imprint is fragile and in need of protection. Even though the rational penetration of the mysterious and unstoppable metamorphoses of all life remains hidden from us, this very circumstance opens infinite possibilities for coexistence. At the heart of Schwindt’s practice is the injured human body, inspired by ancient sculptures that she has researched for many years  in  various  museums,  in  the  context  of  conservation  history,  and  through discussions with archaeologists. The fact that she is depicting not living humans but rather representations of bodies from earlier civilizations leads to reflections on what societal developments and circumstances might have influenced the design and self-perception of these bodies. Schwindt is fascinated by these sculptures as carriers of a history of gaze on the body that has significantly shaped beauty ideals for centuries, extending beyond classicism to the present day. Schwindt is interested in the cultural heritage that has influenced how we view and encounter bodies, and she detects in these damaged and broken bodies an opportunity to, at best, reorient our gaze. She portrays the ancient bodies in their state as matter exposed to time and tides, with their flaws and changes, but not as isolated objects of study, rather as creatures intertwined with and embedded in nature, whose surfaces have been inhabited over centuries by creatures and marine plants, touched by the elements like a landscape. Inspired by these fragments of the past, which were either submerged under water on the seabed or buried in the earth for centuries, Grace emphasizes the depths of nature as a protective space, where the figures are not isolated or forgotten, but connected, and their resonance with everything around them is evident. Schwindt is fascinated by the web of unevenness, traces, and patina that spread over the bodies like a blanket, planted on these bodies over centuries, ultimately protecting them from our denatured gaze. In paintings such as Dancing Through, various elements of these fragmented bodies float almost dancing and timelessly in a predominantly blue-grey organic mass of freely moving glazes. The variety in the treatment of the painting surfaces, from delicate transparency to dense intensity, reads like cartographic descriptions on the bodies and echoes the surrounding space. In When a Body Becomes a Landscape, lines seem to spontaneously wander across the body, as do the oil and ink, developing a certain autonomy. Both the figure and the line and color fields are in motion and transformation, extending expansively beyond the edges of the image. The reason for these metamorphoses remains enigmatic and can only be understood as the primal force of life: the indeterminable as a fundamental principle of nature in flux. Aiding in this mysterious process are representatives of the animal world, especially birds, who act as guardians, messengers, or mediators supporting the transformations, however never appear fixed in a specific role but instead at times, become active protagonists and appear in different stages of transformation themselves. Schwindt is interested in how birds have been used to represent specific symbolism in art and film histories and intends to interrupt them. The expansive and shielding spread of the wings of butterflies and birds before the bodies, as seen in Touching Figure or Butterflies and Falling Leaves, and their “docking” at the edges, as well as their appearance in groups, as in Encounter, highlight nature’s role as gatekeeper and shield from our intrusive and categorizing gaze. Like in Encounter, they are positioned at the joints between body and environment, initiating the fusion of all image elements. The prominent position of the bird with human features, centrally above in When a Body Becomes a Landscape, spreading its wings welcomingly and exchanging an intense, loving gaze with the figure, emphasizes the importance of tenderness and touch as drivers of transformation and healing. It is about honoring wounds and injuries, showing them as part of the natural balance, and allowing them to  exert  their  strength.

Photo: Grace Schwindt, When a body becomes a Landscape, 2024, Oil, ink and pencil on canvas, 170 x 260 cm / 66 ⅞ x 102 ⅜ in., © Grace Schwindt, Courtesy the artist and Galerie Peter Kilchmann

Info: Galerie Peter Kilchmann, 11-13 rue des Arquebusiers, Paris, France, Duration: 1/10-21/12/2024, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, www.peterkilchmann.com/