↳ Exhibitions

Mindy Rose Schwartz at Et al.

January 29, 2021

Artist: Mindy Rose Schwartz

Venue: Et al., San Francisco, US

Date: November 7, 2020 – January 30, 2021

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Et al.

I flip ahead in a book I’ve only just started and am startled by a familiar name. I read a paragraph at the beginning of a chapter out of context and take it as a sign:

Day Something. Dreams about Cassie. I woke up and actually saw her stand at the door of the cave. Then she vanished; I mean became again the patterns of rock and sun-spots-in-my-eyes I’d been making her out of. Hallucinations aren’t just “seeing something”; they’re a special case of perception in which you work a little harder, that’s all. ¹

There is something about a human that is more electric than a photo, more convoluted than the most thorough biology. Mindy Rose Schwartz’s art is that ‘work a little harder’ version of seeing.

Sculpture of chalky bone and golden webs of tendon, these sculptures are pastoral and graven, spectral cat’s cradles dripping shadows. That thing in a movie when a spell is cast (or un-cast) and all at once vines stream and swirl and buds form and bloom? Something of that, the exhibition as the site of conjuring; artworks as tools of vision.

1. Russ, Joanna. We Who Are about to… London: The Women’s Press Science Fiction, 1987.

Mindy Rose Schwartz (b. Chicago, IL) received her MFA from University of Illinois, Chicago, IL. Schwartz has exhibited across the US and internationally at Queer Thoughts, New York; False Flag Gallery, New York; Atlanta Contemporary, Atlanta, GA; Rose Museum, Waltham, MA; AWHRHWAR Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Interface Gallery, San Francisco, CA; Prairie, Slow Gallery, Terrain Gallery, Three Walls Gallery, The Renaissance Society, and the Spertus Museum, Chicago, IL; Arcadia Missa, London, UK; Cooper Cole, Toronto, CA; Room E 10-27 Center, Berlin, DE; Saint Cirq la Popie Bienniel, FR; Eric Hussenot, Paris, FR; and Balice Hertling, Paris, FR. Schwartz lives and works in Chicago, IL.

Mindy Rose Schwartz, 2020, exhibition view, Et al., San Francisco

Mindy Rose Schwartz, Connected, 2020, Fabric, thread, wood beads, rope, earrings, fluff, 102 x 10 x 7 in, 259.1 x 25.4 x 17.8 cm

Mindy Rose Schwartz, Eye Portrait, 2020, Reeds, branches, wire, resin, mirror, crystals, lamé cord, linen cord, rope, 40 x 24 x 16 in, 101.6 x 61 x 40.6 cm

Mindy Rose Schwartz, Glance Back, 2020, Branches, reeds, wire, resin, linen cord, lamé cord, earrings, crystals, fake flowers, chain, 50 x 51 x 13 in, 127 x 129.5 x 33 cm

Mindy Rose Schwartz, Gone, 2020, Sticks, reeds, resin, wire, earrrings, chain, crystals, fake flowers, 43 x 41 x 13 in, 109.2 x 104.1 x 33 cm

Mindy Rose Schwartz, Portraits, 2018, Upholstery fabric, fluff, thread, earrings, 25 x 34 x 4 in, 63.5 x 86.4 x 10.2 cm

Mindy Rose Schwartz, Talisman, 2020, Branches, resin, wire, mirror, linen cord, lamé cord, crystals, wire, chain, 43 x 36 x 7 in, 109.2 x 91.4 x 17.8 cm