The Swan's Script I

Upstate Art Weekend
The Sphinx at Basilica Hudson
Back Gallery
110 South Front Street
Hudson, NY
Friday 6/26, 12-8 PM
Saturday 6/27, 12-6 PM
Sunday 6/28, 12-8:30 PM

Rachel Cope
Max Razdow
Dana Sherwood

Opening Reception: Friday 6/26, 5-8 PM.
Performance by Melora Creager of Rasputina.

Closing Reception: Sunday 6/28, 5-8:30.
Performances by Melora Creager of Rasputina, Jeanette Andrews. Readings by Melissa Auf der Maur and Pam Grossman.

The Swan’s Script I is the first of three exhibitions in a series curated by The Sphinx. The Swan’s Script I draws inspiration from Hilma af Klint’s The Swan series (1914–1915), a progression of swan paintings. The exhibition imagines the swan less as an emblem than as a switching device, allowing form to pivot, digress and multiply with devotion — from figuration to abstraction — through an array of narrative and plotless utterances. The symbol of the swan disguising, doubling, and mirroring its own image may be framed as an euphemism of transformation in an otherwise continuous being, as portrayed between Acts II and III of Swan Lake, when the principal dancer changes costume to transfigure from Odette to Odile.

The swans in af Klint’s paintings present a play of opposites, quadrants, and alchemical forms; similarly, M.C. Escher’s Swan (1956) wood engravings evoke computational formats and patterning through swan shadows, jagged plumage, and infinity loops. In the Swan’s Script I, we aim to capture a language that opens itself to phenomenological potentials, interweaving birds and abstraction, creating persuasions that curve and fold as poetics.

Melissa Auf der Maur will be reading from EVEN THE GOOD GIRLS WILL CRY: My 90s Rock Memoir.
Pam Grossman will be reading from MAGIC MAKER. Performances will be presented by Jeanette Andrews and Melora Creager of Rasputina.