Eliana Willis

When an artist still in her first year of graduate school has a solo show in a New York City gallery, it’s a reason to pay attention. And when that exhibition is an instant sell out, mostly to institutional buyers, as was the case with Gio Swaby’s debut at Harlem’s Claire Oliver Gallery, you can bet people will start to take notice.
Swaby, 29, hails from the Bahamas but currently lives in Toronto, where she relocated last fall to pursue an MFA at the Ontario College of Art & Design University. But unlike most art students, she had already secured gallery representation, thanks to a timely Instagram introduction to Oliver from curator Danielle Krysa.
About a year later, her debut with the gallery is a smash hit—but Swaby and Oliver still haven’t met.
“I haven’t been able to visit the gallery,” Swaby told Artnet News. “I haven’t seen my show in person. Although it feels like I’ve known Claire for a million years.”
Gio Swaby, Pretty Pretty 8 (2021), detail. Photo courtesy of Claire Oliver Gallery, New York.
“It was almost like a long-distance love affair where you get to know them really well because you’re on the  phone with them all the time,” Oliver agreed. The gallery had never signed an artist sight unseen before, but she knew Swaby was something special.
“Gio’s work is super dynamic. It’s well crafted, it’s singular,” Oliver said. “And once I spoke to her and heard the conceptual underpinnings that the work was based on, I just fell head over heels.… if you like it in photos, when you see it in person you fall madly in love.”
“Gio Swaby: Both Sides of the Sun” includes work from three series, all of which serve as celebrations of Black womanhood. The artist works with fabric to create threaded line portraits and striking silhouettes using colorful textiles, the patterns strategically placed to echo the natural curves and forms of the body. Many of the works are done in life-size scale, Swaby’s subjects—often, friends she photographs—proudly taking up space.
“We don’t have enough images of Black bodies experiencing joy. The media feeds us so many images of Black people in moments of suffering, and it effects you because you see yourself reflected in that,” Swaby said. “I wanted to create a space where we could see ourselves reflected in a moment of joy, celebrated without expectations, without connected stereotypes.”
Gio Swaby, Love Letter 7 (2021). Photo courtesy of Claire Oliver Gallery, New York.
It’s work that has resonated with audiences, including—pending final board approval of purchases—some of the most prestigious art museums in the U.S. The show at the gallery closes this weekend, but—in a very unusual move for a commercial gallery show—it will travel next year to the Museum of Fine Art St. Petersburg in Florida and the Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis, two of the eight museums that bought work from the exhibition.
Prices currently top out at about $25,000 for the largest works—if you’re lucky enough to get one.
“There’s over 100 people on the waiting list,” Oliver said. “It’s in the gallery’s mission statement to find the correct custodians of the work, who will care for it. That includes a lot of museums that will put this work on view for the greater public.”
Swaby has a strong collector base in the Bahamas that she has cultivated over the years, and private collectors who were able to purchase works from the current show include the author Roxane Gay and actor Hill Harper, of CSI: NY and The Good Doctor.
“I didn’t have these kinds of expectations,” Swaby admitted. “It’s a lot to take in, but I’m feeling more excited than anything else.”
Gio Swaby. Photo courtesy of Claire Oliver Gallery.
“I think she has unlimited potential,” Oliver said. “I just feel like the sky’s the limit for where she’s going.”
Such success would have seemed unimaginable when Swaby was starting her studies at the College of the Bahamas.
“I had the belief that art couldn’t be something that you pursued as a career,” she admitted. “But nothing else felt right.”
Swaby received her associates degree in fine arts in 2012 and a bachelor of fine arts at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver two years later. She swiftly found her footing as a working artist, staging a pair of solo shows in Canada and the Bahamas, but a love of learning and a desire to refine her craft drew her back to the classroom—albeit virtually—this fall.
Gio Swaby, New Growth 7 (2020). Photo courtesy of Claire Oliver Gallery, New York.
Art and creativity has always been part of Swaby’s life. She traces her interest in textiles to her mother, a lifelong seamstress, who died last year.
“Growing up my house was full of fabric and thread and sewing machines,” she said. “I’m one of five siblings, but I was the only child who was really interested in sewing at all.”
Swaby recalls working on projects with her mom, sewing doll clothes or Halloween costumes. “I connect textiles with an act of love,” she said.
Gio Swaby, Pretty Pretty 5 (2021), detail. Photo courtesy of Claire Oliver Gallery, New York.
Working in textiles also makes her feel like part of a broader artistic family of Black women who have broken new ground in the medium. Faith Ringgold, Bisa Butler, and Billie Zangewa “have created a path that creates space for artists like me,” she said.
This chosen medium also has broader significance.
“So much of it is connected with this idea of domesticity,” Swaby said. “I’m thinking about how this work connects with all of the unseen or under-appreciated labor that is a part of womanhood. Working this way is a way to honor that and to show my gratitude for that work.”
Gio Swaby, Pretty Pretty 9 (2021). Photo courtesy of Claire Oliver Gallery, New York.
To further highlight that labor, her series “Pretty Pretty” actually features the backside of the work, with all the loose threads from Swaby’s hand-stitched portraits.
“The back of the piece is about sharing a moment of vulnerability with the viewer, rejecting this idea of perfection and embracing what might be considered flaws to have a recognition of beauty,” she said.
All of the work in the current show was made during 2020 and 2021—which required Zoom photoshoots, rather than in-person sessions with models, typically the artist’s friends. The exhibition’s title, “Both Sides of the Sun,” is a nod to Swaby’s isolation in Canada. Despite her physical distance from her loved ones in the Bahamas, she drew strength from the fact that they were all facing the same challenges, under the same sun.
Gio Swaby, Love Letter 7 (2021). Photo courtesy of Claire Oliver Gallery, New York.
The artist was also responding to the events of last summer, to the murder of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protests that swept the globe in the aftermath.
“The feelings that I had at that specific time are always with me as a Black woman, and it was even more heightened during that period,” Swaby said. “It was incredibly hard already to be experiencing this global pandemic and sharing in that loss with everyone else in the world, but also experiencing with all other Black people the incredible loss that we have suffered and we are constantly reminded of.”
Swaby believes that bringing depictions of Black joy into museums and galleries—spaces that have traditionally excluded Black people—is both a radical act of resistance and an opportunity for healing.
“Some of the moments that have had the greatest impact on me as an artist is where I hear feedback from Black women and girls who are seeing the work and recognizing themselves, seeing themselves reflected in the work and being celebrated,” Swaby said. “I’ve had quite a few people  reach out to me on Instagram to express gratitude—it’s a lovefest.”
See more works from the exhibition below.
Gio Swaby, Pretty Pretty 6 (2021), detail. Photo courtesy of Claire Oliver Gallery, New York.
Gio Swaby, New Growth 11 (2020). Photo courtesy of Claire Oliver Gallery, New York.
Gio Swaby, New Growth 10 (2020). Photo courtesy of Claire Oliver Gallery, New York.
Gio Swaby, Pretty Pretty 5 (2021). Photo courtesy of Claire Oliver Gallery, New York.
Gio Swaby, Love Letter 5 (2021). Photo courtesy of Claire Oliver Gallery, New York.
Gio Swaby, New Growth 3 (2020). Photo courtesy of Claire Oliver Gallery, New York.
Gio Swaby, New Growth 2 (2020). Photo courtesy of Claire Oliver Gallery, New York.
Gio Swaby, Love Letter 3 (2021). Photo courtesy of Claire Oliver Gallery, New York.
“Gio Swaby: Both Sides of the Sun” is on view at Claire Oliver Gallery, 2288 Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard, New York, April 10–June 5, 2021. 
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A throng of reporters filed into New York’s Pier 36, also known as Basketball City (and a former site of the NADA art fair), this week as organizers of “Immersive Van Gogh” opened up the space for a preview of their experience extravaganza.
Amid hammering by construction workers building platforms and sets throughout the 70,0000-square foot space, the press donned custom-painted hardhats with distinctive Van Gogh designs (swirling Starry Night patterns and brightly colored sunflowers) for a walkthrough and demonstration of the event.
Special viewing platforms under construction inside Immersive Van Gogh at Pier 36 in New York City. Photo by Eileen Kinsella
With nearly 100 projectors splashing colorful and intricate moving images of Van Gogh’s night skies, stars, wheat fields, crows, and numerous self portraits across every possible surface (all of which is enhanced by strategically placed mirrors and soaring classical music), the experience is truly “immersive” and—to be honest—pretty incredible.
Anticipation is running high after the Van Gogh experience made a big-time appearance in the Netflix hit Emily In Paris. The exhibition, which has already been a wild success in Paris, Chicago, and Toronto, is already selling like wild in New York: the organizers said 250,000 advance tickets have been sold thus far.
Speaking to reporters, producer Svetlana Dvoretsky described it as “the largest and most elaborate” presentation yet.
Pier 36 on the Lower East Side is the site of the New York City version of Immersive Van Gogh. Photo by Eileen Kinsella.
The show was designed by Massimiliano Siccardi, with original music by Italian multimedia composer Luca Longobardi, who provided a score that combines experimental electronic music with ethereal piano.
Vittorio Guidotti is the art director and Broadway producer David Korins, who created the sets for Hamilton and Dear Evan Hansen, was brought on board as creative director. His mark on the show is already indelible. 
Korins called the experience a “runaway train smash hit in every city that it has been in,” adding that he was thrilled to join the team in New York. His own research, undertaken during lockdown, involved video tours of the shows at other venues.
The “letter station” at Immersive Van Gogh New York. Photo by Eileen Kinsella.
He also delved into the life of the artist, including research into the artist’s synesthesia. It’s generally accepted that Van Gogh had a special form of the condition known as chromesthesia, in which he was able to hear color and see sounds.
“I wanted to try and humanize Van Gogh so that you see him as a man and as an artist,” Korins said.
Installation view of Immersive Van Gogh in New York. Photo by Eileen Kinsella
One of his additions to the show is a swirl of papers frozen and suspended in mid-air. It was created from digital scans of over 1,000 letters that the artist wrote to his brother, Theo, during his lifetime.
The booth allows guests to ask questions of “Vincent” and get answers from artificial intelligence designed to speak on the artist’s behalf.
Another exhibit offers visitors a closer look at one of the artist’s most famous subjects, sunflowers, while the ceiling of the entrance way, inspired by The Starry Night, and was created with more than 7,800 paint brushes dipped in multiple colors. 
So, all in all, there’s a lot to see.
Installation view of Immersive Van Gogh in Chicago. Photo by Michael Brosilow.

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French street artist JR has become something of a master of illusion, and his latest work just might be his most striking yet, with a photographic collage installation showing Paris’s beloved Eiffel Tower precariously perched atop a gaping canyon with a city below.
Visitors to the Eiffel Tower can pose with the artwork, appearing to leap across the gap, to straddle the cliffs, to fall into the chasm, or to peer down at the city far below. (And, as you’ll see below, they have done all of these things!)
The project is something of a followup to JR’s 2019 installation at the Louvre Museum, also in Paris, celebrating the 30th anniversary of I.M. Pei’s glass pyramid. The artist used 2,000 sheets of paper to create the illusion that the pyramid was rising not from the Louvre’s Cour Napoléon courtyard, but from a deep rock quarry. This fall, he’ll take the same technique to the  Pyramids of Giza in Egypt for a project with Art d’Egypte.
JR’s installation at the Louvre in 2019 on the occasion of the pyramid’s 30th anniversary. Photo courtesy of JR-art/Perrotin Gallery.
All of the projects feature the artist’s signature black and white imagery with anamorphic photography—a distorted version of the image that appears normal when viewed from a single point. Stand in the right spot, and the 132-year-old Eiffel Tower perfectly aligns with JR’s photo backdrop, creating both a stunning optical illusion and an incredible photo op.
The 2019 Louvre installation lasted for just a single day before it was destroyed by visitors, but the Eiffel Tower piece, on the Place du Trocadéro near the Palais de Chaillot, is slated to remain on view for a month.
The public artwork was unveiled just days before the opening of “JR Chronicles,” the artist’s blockbuster Brooklyn Museum retrospective, touches down in Europe at the Saatchi Gallery in London. (Pace is also staging concurrent JR exhibitions in New York and London.)
JR, The Wound (La Ferita (2021) at the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence. Photo courtesy of JR.
JR has not given any interviews about the new piece at the Eiffel Tower, but a similar trompe-l’oeil pasting currently on the façade of the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence is a commentary about the closure of cultural institutions under lockdown restrictions, and how people have been cut off from art. (Similarly, the Eiffel Tower remains closed to visitors until July 16.)
“Without being able to enter a museum, to attend a concert or spend time at an exhibition, we realize that it is culture that gives life its color and that the beauty of our city is activated by the people that pass through it,” JR told CNN Style.
See more photos of the installation, alongside Instagram shots of people making the most of it, below.
JR’s Eiffel Tower public art installation. Photo courtesy of JR.
JR’s Eiffel Tower public art installation. Photo courtesy of JR.
JR’s Eiffel Tower public art installation. Photo courtesy of JR.
JR’s Eiffel Tower public art installation. Photo courtesy of JR.

“JR: The Wound” is on view at Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, March 19–August 29, 2021.
“JR: Chronicles” is on view at Saatchi Gallery in London, Duke of York’s HQ, King’s Rd, London SW3 4RY, with major support from Art Explora, June 4–October 3, 2021.
“JR: Eye to the World” is on view at Pace, 6 Burlington Gardens, London, June 4–July 3, 2021; and “JR: Tehachapi” is on view at Pace, 540 West 25th Street, New York, June 4–August 21, 2021. 
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Hoping to signal culture’s emergence from lockdown and inject sales momentum as we head into the usually sleepy summer season, London is premiering its first ever gallery weekend this week, aiming to offer a comprehensive overview of the scene across the capital.
To tackle London’s vast geography, the weekend has been split into three broad areas. A glut of more than 100 central London galleries will take center stage on Friday, and gallery devotees will be spoiled for choice—a well-planned itinerary might include a pitstop to the street outside Pace Gallery to catch a capsule performance from Jean Dubuffet’s Coucou Bazaar. Saturday is South London’s time to shine, with some 20 galleries taking part over a more spread out area so visitors are advised to plan their map accordingly, and nearly 30 galleries in edgy East London will be the focus on Sunday. 
Here are our picks of what to see on each of the days. 

Friday: Central London

“Lost in Italy” Luxembourg + CoThrough July 3, 2021
Installation view of “Lost in Italy,” 2021. Courtesy of Damian Griffiths Photography.
Curated by former Venice Biennale curator Francesco Bonami, “Lost in Italy” examines Italy’s unique role in the international artistic exchange of the 1950s and ’60s. The exhibition presents historical works by Alberto Burri, Marcel Duchamp, Yves Klein, Jannis Kounellis, Cy Twombly, and others, alongside a new and startling work by Maurizio Cattelan, which is visible from the street outside.
“Lost in Italy,” Luxembourg + Co., 2 Savile Row, London

“Tala Madani: Skid Mark”Pilar CorriasThrough July 10
Tala Madani, Five our of Six (2021). Courtesy of the artist and Pilar Corrias, London
The Iranian artist’s new show is not made for the squeamish. For “Skid Mark,” Madani has created new paintings from her ongoing “Shit Moms” series, depicting female figures that appear to be made out of excrement. An animation of one of the shit moms shows her passing through upscale interiors leaving brown stains on surfaces and furniture, and growing frustrated with the limitations of her amorphous and semi-solid form. Other new paintings include the character of a fully grown Pinocchio with a wooden penis, and series of ominous-looking ceiling fans.
“Tala Madani: Skid Mark,” Pilar Corrias, 54 Eastcastle Street, London

“Julie Curtiss: Monads and Dyads”White Cube Mason’s YardThrough June 26
Julie Curtiss, Interstice (2020). © Julie Curtiss. Photo: © Theo Christelis, White Cube.
For her first exhibition in London, Julie Curtiss’s new show of paintings, sculptures, and works on paper continues in the veins of cartoonish, humorous, and cheeky tableaux that riff on tropes of pop culture. The show’s title is a reference to organizing principles of the monad, denoting the individual, and the dyad, referencing a pair, in association or opposition. The works on view reference the dualism of these principles with allusions to symmetry and opposition, contemporary and historic, obvious and subtle.
“Monads and Dyads,” White Cube, 25–26 Mason’s Yard, London

“Kapwani Kiwanga: Cache”Goodman GalleryThrough June 12
Installation view at Goodman Gallery. Courtesy Goodman Gallery.
For her exhibition “Cache,” Kiwanga presents a new body of work that continues her research into power, society, and resistance, where she unearths the overlooked histories of materials. Take her ceramic work Semence, which looks at how red rice was brought from West Africa to Suriname and Virginia, US, via the slave trade—the small grains were individually sewn into clothing or braided into hair in order to provide food if and when that person found the means to escape. Some 15,000 of these delicate pieces are arranged into a large sculpture.
“Cache,” Goodman Gallery, 26 Cork Street, London 
Saturday: South London

“Jade Montserrat: In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens”Bosse & BaumThrough July 24
Jade Montserrat, She made her fall glorious (2016). Courtesy of the artist and Bosse & Baum.
For her first solo with Bosse & Baum, Jade Montserrat’s show title is drawn from text by Alice Walker, drawing a through line between nature and Black women’s bodies in her exquisitely detailed work. Montserrat undertakes extensive research that balances her personal historical experience with that of a larger group to address questions of systemic racism and other forms of discrimination.
“In Search Of Our Mothers’ Gardens” Bosse & Baum, Unit BGC, Ground Floor, Bussey Building, 133 Rye Lane London,
“Tom Lovelace: Bathers”Sid Motion GalleryThrough June 12
Bathers (2021).Image courtesy of Sid Motion Gallery and the artist.
Lovelace will present an installation that brings together photography and performances as the latest iteration of his ongoing “Living Pictures” series. Performers will activate photographs presented as reflective pools on the floor, transforming the gallery into a contemplative environment. Performances will take place daily over London Gallery Weekend, and RSVP is essential.
“Bathers,” Sid Motion Gallery, 24a Penarth Centre, Hatcham Road, London
“Christopher Hartmann: In and Out of Touch“Hannah Barry GalleryThrough July 31, 2021
Christopher Hartmann, What could we do about it anyway (2020). Courtesy of Hannah Barry Gallery.
Christopher Hartmann paints figures caught in tenuous moments of vulnerability and internal reflection against vague backdrops. These images, primarily of men, pay special attention to the facial expressions from body shapes and capture the contemporary longing for touch and connection amid the emotional intensities of our time.
“In and Out of Touch” Hannah Barry Gallery, 4 Holly Grove, London
Sunday: East London

“Tobias Spichtig: Nothing”FreehouseThrough July 17
Exhibition view of Tobias Spichtig’s “Das Böse im Dunkeln” in 2018 at FREEHOUSE, London. Courtesy the artist and the gallery.
The Berlin- and Zurich-based artist will present a series of new paintings that continue to explore his recurring interest in themes of emptiness as well as vacuous icons or symbols. It is his second show at the London gallery.
“Nothing,” Freehouse, 54 Three Colts Lane, London

“Tosh Basco: Portraits, Still Lifes and Flowers”Carlos/IshikawaThrough July 3
Tosh Basco, Safi still life (2021). ©Tosh Basco 2021, courtesy the artist and Carlos/ Ishikawa, London. Photo by Damian Griffiths.
The artist Tosh Basco (formerly known as Boychild) will present a new body of works for her second solo show with the gallery. Though best known for her performance work, the exhibition will forefront another dimension to the artist’s practice that has informed her performances: photography. The exhibition presents never-before-seen images chronicling Basco’s daily life over the past two years. The 12 photographs on view each capture a pile of hundreds of still shots that have been printed and stacked together, which Basco describes as akin to memory banks.
“Portraits, Still Lifes and Flowers,” Carlos/Ishikawa, Unit 4, 88 Mile End Road, London

“Shannon Cartier Lucy: Cake on the Floor”Soft OpeningThrough July 31
Shannon Cartier Lucy, A Soft Rein (2021). Courtesy the artist and Soft Opening, London. Photo by Theo Christelis.
The Nashville-based artist Shannon Cartier Lucy presents 11 new paintings in the first London solo presentation of her work. Lucy’s disturbing paintings of women among the trappings of a party carry violent undertones, and add an uncomfortable dimension of objectification to her chosen medium of traditional figurative oil painting.
“Cake on the Floor,” Soft Opening, 6 Minerva Street, London
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