Exhibition - Philip Swan: The Present Is Never Our End

Amos Eno Gallery, a non-profit, artist-run gallery in Bushwick, Brooklyn, is pleased to present The Present Is Never Our End, a solo exhibition by Philip Swan, on view from September 5 to October 6, 2024. An opening reception will take place at the gallery's location at 56 Bogart St. on Friday, Sept. 6, from 6 to 8 p.m.

With a combnation of oil paintings on canvas along with several works on paper in this show, his third solo at Amos Eno, Swan took inspiration from this quote in Blaise Pascal’s Pensées, which informed the title of the exhibition: 

“Le each of us examine his thoughts; he will find them wholly concerned with the past or the future. We almost never think of the present, and if we do think of it, it is only to see what light it throws on our plans for the future. The present is never our end. The past and the present are our means, the future alone our end.”

Inspired by these ideas, Swan explores the way viewers unconsciously interpret abstraction through free association. He engages with shapes, colors, lines and textures in ways that draw on memories and emotions inspired by — but in no way determined by — the memories and emotions of the artist who created the work. By encouraging an element of introspective daydreaming, the ambiguity of abstraction often generates emotional associations in both the artist and the viewer, each colored by their own personal experiences. 

Swan’s paintings are an internalized distillation of living in New York City for nearly three decades, capturing its energy and geometry in a way that can often be both exhilarating and overwhelming. While the paintings are self-contained, they are connected through color and compositional similarity. 

In the process of creating work, Swan conceives of compositional and aesthetic roadblocks and then improvises his way to a solution while avoiding resolving problems concretely, thus allowing previous stray pathways which eluded resolution to remain visible. The resulting pentimento gives the work its complex composition.

About the Artist

Philip Swan is a self-taught artist whose paintings, mainly oil on canvas, are self-contained, but connected through color and compositional similarity. Influences include painters Amy Sillman and Charline von Heyl.