the overpass, the undergoer, tilted water

Liv Rahel Schwenk

PUTTY'S CORONATION is pleased to announce the opening of THE OVERPASS, THE UNDERGOER, TILTED WATER, a solo exhibition by Liv Rahel Schwenk at Putty’s Coronation at 1086 Myrtle Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11206 from October 8th - October 30th, 2022. 

In her solo debut at Putty’s Coronation, Liv Rahel Schwenk presents THE OVERPASS, THE UNDERGOER, TILTED WATER, a series of performances, video projections, and works on canvas.

reaching into

and thoroughly 

through the

overpass - that

structure which,

on certain nights, 

lends the undergoer

a levity of spirit.

The overpass, the undergoer, tilted water by Liv Rahel Schwenk exemplifies the artist’s continued exploration of the body’s relationship to the physical and political boundaries of architectural structures. Placing herself in often precarious situations, Schwenk’s performances aim to challenge and transcend the defined rigidity of these boundaries by climbing, jumping, and crawling through, atop, and under these structures. Often leaving behind visible traces of the body's trajectory as witnesses to the struggle to redefine these spaces and the power structures they are meant to uphold. Employing a conceptual and process oriented approach, Schwenk becomes the undergoer in which the obstacles of physical space express themselves as deeper obstacles of human consciousness.  Examining themes of interference, cause and effect, restriction and autonomy, time and space as they interweave and pose questions of continuity. 

In the overpass, the undergoer, tilted water, Schwenk’s performance engages with the gallery’s large concave skylight. Using a rope attached to one of the skylight’s three supportive diagonal braces, Schwenk makes the thirty foot ascent into the skylight, operating her body as a vector to adjust and adapt to the space, working with and against the angularity of it’s shapes, before climbing down again. During the performance, Schwenk’s actions are documented with a camera pointing vertically up at the skylight. On her descent, she then attaches a projector to the rope that she used to climb up on and projects the video of the performance onto the floor beneath the skylight, creating a circular link between the performance and its projected documentation. With the image of the recent performance projected onto the floor, the ground and sky become mirrored images of each othe. Of what is, once was, and what could be. 

In addition to the performance, Schwenk also presents a series of large scale drawings. Expanding from a previous project titled embedded circles, Schwenk uses ropes to suspend the drawings from the gallery ceiling.Marked with a series of lines and semicircles which overlap within a simple grid of three squares, the dark blue lines of the drawings evoke a feeling of water and waves, appealing to the parts of our brain that work outside of linear time. As with her choreographic work, Schwenk combines rules and patterns with the body, examining digital methods on an analogue and bodily plane. Expressed in all of this is Schwenks commitment to questioning the nature of our own existence. Perceptions of time and memory overlap, the body contending with its own physicality, creating a self-perpetuating loop of time and space.

Liv Rahel Schwenk (German-American, b. 1984) is an interdisciplinary artist working in LA and Stuttgart, Germany. She got her M.A. at Art Academy Düsseldorf studying with artist Georg Herold. In 2013 she received a DAAD grant to study dance in NYC, and to explore the ideas behind her algorithmic, visual work as they connect to performance and choreography. She recently showed her solo project worldline at mh project in NYC, and the choreographic work embedded circles at Simultanhalle in Cologne, Germany. She has published two artist books.