Joel Swanson:

Left to Right, Top to Bottom

Joel Swanson: Left to Right, Top to Bottom surveyed the work of the Denver-based artist. Swanson explores language and its literal (sometimes even physical) forms. He stretches language to become an image or multiple images. He takes a highly disciplined approach to art-making, using the rigor of 1960s Conceptualism as a foundation and finding ways of making it relevant to us today. He uses the structures of grammar and composition as sources for creative production. Importantly, such constraints become enormously productive and open up a range of possibilities for what he might do. He finds those subjects or ideas which are embedded in daily life and scrutinizes them in refreshing ways.

Joel Swanson was born in 1978 in Chicago. He received his MFA in digital art at the University of California, San Diego and is currently the Director of the Technology, Arts & Media Program at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He lives and works in Denver.