For Art Rotterdam 2013, Tenderpixel presents a solo project by the Danish artist Julie Born Schwartz.
Fly me to the moon (2012) derives from the artist’s chance encounter with a man in a hilltop park in South London. After routinely seeing him during her daily jog, they begin to speak–eventually developing a bond around Giacomo Puccini’s opera, Turandot. Schwartz’s continual research begins with film while appropriating elements of others’ lives to fill gaps in her own history. Mysterious and iconographic artefacts punctuate the video compositions (namely a model ship, in Fly me to the moon), each item infused by significant personal milestones. The resulting assemblage is archaeological, quasi-fictional, imperfect and idiosyncratic; each project’s chosen area of research becoming biographical, and vice-versa.
Also included are Parallax (2012) and Schwartz’ ongoing greeting cards series, an image collection drawn from the artist’s transient upbringing, indicating places that are at once authentic and location-less. Together, they can be taken as an attempt to stitch together an origin story (or a sense of consistency) detailing the precariously rootless existence dictated by contemporary professions in industries such as art, finance, or consulting.
Schwartz’ projects comprise a larger picture of personal creativity that is light, humorous and meaningful, yet deeply itinerant: our histories equally as distant as our wildest aspirations.
Julie Born Schwartz (b Chicago US, 1981, raised in Denmark) lives and works in Copenhagen. She received a BFA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths College in 2011, and graduated from the Royal Academy Schools in London in 2014. She was awarded the The Red Mansion Prize in 2014.
Beginning with periods of extensive research and thorough engagement with a social context, particular situation or material, Born Schwartz’s practice is focused on constructing large scale narratives that find their form in installations employing photography, video and sculpture.
Recent exhibitions include solo show at Union Pacific (2016); Social Choreography, Screening Programme at Tenderpixel, London UK; Posta Portae no.1, Düsseldorf DE; Lige ved Næsten, Samtidskunst med socialt engagement, Museum of Religious Art, Lemvig DK; The Red Mansion Art Prize, Slade Research Centre, London UK (all 2015); Lige ved Næsten, Museum of Religious Art, Lemvig DK; Union, Union Pacific Gallery, London; How to… Sydhavn Station, Copenhagen DK; Young Danish Photography 14, Photographic Center, Copenhagen, DK; Royal Academy Schools Final Show, London; Fulfilment Centre curated by N/V Projects, The Sunday Painter, London (all 2014). Let me play among the stars, Projektraum Lotte, Stuttgart, DE; I had an expectation that it would fade, Four Boxes Gallery, Krabbesholm Højskole, Skive, DK; Art Rotterdam 2013, solo presentation, Tenderpixel, Rotterdam, NL (all 2013); Fly me to the moon, Kunstarkaden, Munich DE; he she it/did said would, Tenderpixel, London; The Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, London (all 2012).