FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wednesday, September 28 – One Night Only from 6-8 PM
LUDWIG SCHWARZ
“Untitled (Travelogue 8), ed. 2/4”

Freight + Volume = Ludwig Schwarz Divided by Four or Maybe Just One.

Freight + Volume presents Ludwig Schwarz on view September 28 from 6-8 PM. The exhibition is part of a project that includes three additional openings in locations across the country, each featuring the same series of eight paintings, in four editions. These editions are each entitled: Untitled (Travelogue 8). The originals will be shown in Austin, Texas, as part of the Arthouse Texas Prize exhibition, for which Schwarz is one of four finalists. Reduced scale reproductions – manufactured according to Schwarz’s specifications by craftsmen in Shenzhen, China – will be displayed in Austin as well as the other locations, which include Freight + Volume, QED gallery in Los Angeles, and a pawnshop that Schwarz frequents in Dallas.

All four exhibitions also include sculptural elements and a video with musical score composed by the artist. A segment of the video documents Schwarz pawning one of the Untitled (Travelogue 8) editions at the aforementioned Dallas pawnshop for a few dollars, which was a clever way of obtaining another public viewing of his work, as anyone is free to look at the merchandise. A found-object sculpture, which the pawn money was used to purchase, will also be on display in Austin.

By working with manufactured “editions” of paintings that arrive neatly packed in crates, Schwarz in no way calls into question the notions of authorial presence or original expression. Nor does he wish to position the work of art as commodity, as he confesses to loving and hating every element of this quixotic production with equal fervor, regardless of whether he applied the paint or a Chinese man did, regardless of which video loop is playing where on which type of television or projection screen.

Moreover, the pairing of painting with video deliberately marries a medium marinated in originality with one encoded with reproduction and endless dissemination. And the appropriate question across the continent, from New York to Los Angeles, becomes, “What’s the difference?” The answers will be found at each individual event, helped and prodded and molded by Schwarz’s art, or perhaps by something else unforeseen or simply unseen.

One could sink to the knees in the morass of political and conceptual issues this show deliberately toys with on the surface: Chinese outsourced labor; relative market value; questions about the nature or art; the list goes on. But Schwarz is quadruple- daring the viewer to find the fire through the smoke. Fortunately, it can’t be missed. Maybe, at the end of the day, one man’s treasure is every man’s treasure, no matter the price paid. – Jeff Dalton, Dallas

Ludwig Schwarz was born in 1964 in Dallas and he continues to live and work in Dallas. He received his BFA in 1986 from Southern Methodist University, Dallas. He completed his MFA in 1990 at the School of Visual Arts, New York and then returned to Dallas, where he has lived and worked for the past 15 years. He has had notable solo exhibitions at Angstrom Gallery, Dallas, the McKinney Avenue Contemporary, Dallas, and Three Walls, San Antonio. Schwarz has also presented exhibition projects in collaboration with other commercial enterprises such as Rent-A-Center (in “Rentown,” Angstrom Gallery, 2001), and Village Pawn Shop and Jewelry in Dallas where he presented the site-specific installation, The Jerk in 2003. His work has also been included in numerous group exhibitions at Art Museum of Southeast Texas, Beaumont, DiverseWorks, Houston; Artpace, San Antonio; PS1, New York; ICA, London; American Fine Arts, New York; Carnegie Mellon Art Gallery, Pittsburgh; Kunstbunker Tumulka, Munich; and Smart Museum, Chicago, among others. He has received a number of awards and grants including the 2005 Moss-Chumley Award, Meadows Museum of Art, Dallas and the 2001 Dozier Travel Grant, Dallas Museum of Art.

For more information, please visit the gallery’s website or contact C. Sean Horton (Director) at 212.989.8700 or sean@freightandvolume.com.

Press

Jerry Saltz calls the gallery and Ludwig Schwarz's one-night exhibition "Scruffy But Smart" in this week's Village Voice
by Jerry Saltz
"Scruffy but Smart" by Jerry Saltz reproduced in Artnet magazine
by Jerry Saltz
A review of Ludwig Schwarz's solo show is included in Art Papers
A review of Ludwig Schwarz's solo show is included in Art Papers
April 1, 2006