© Courtesy of Kelsey Shwetz and cadet capela
Born in 1986 in Canada
Lives and works in New York, NY, US
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Kelsey Shwetz is a Canadian born painter who currently lives and works in New York. Shwetz received her MFA from Columbia University in 2022 where she also taught Painting as an Assistant Adjunct Professor. She is a two-time recipient of the The Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant, along with grants from Canada Council for the Arts and the Mayer Foundation. She was awarded fellowships by the Vermont Studio Center, The Choy Family, Ellen Gelmen, Columbia University and CanSerrat Residency in Barcelona. She has exhibited in the United States, Canada, Slovakia, Stockholm and Mexico; her solo exhibitions include cadet capela (Paris) and Coulisse (Stockholm) in 2023.
Shwetz’s practice is concerned with nature, climate, the weather, and mythology. Situated in the lineage of landscape painting, her canvases are spaces of modified or accelerated growth, uncanny perspective, and architectural folly. Recognizing that a wholly imaginary or fantastical landscape allows a cool distance between the image pictured and our feelings about the real world, Shwetz weaves passages of nature -including those human made- that are recognizable, reminding us of the tender parts of our world that we stand to lose by ecological indifference. Transformation figures heavily in her work, spaces made of disparate material and time blend into each other and geological forms create portals and shifts in the space of the canvas itself. Drawing from Cathedral Architecture, kitsch, sci-fi illustration and, recently, 17th c Netherlandish painting, Shwetz describes a mythology where geological forms, flora, and weather are protagonists. A human presence and cultivation is often indicated without explicitly picturing a body. She paints liminal or psychological threshold spaces, an atmosphere where action has just occurred or is about to unfold. There’s no sign of cataclysm but there is a throb of foreboding.
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
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2023
— Room for Detail, Coulisse, Stockholm, DK
— Pale Slope of the Hour, cadet capela, Paris, FR
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2021
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— A Lamp is Not the Only Sign of Glass, Casa Equis, Mexico City, MX
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SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2023
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— Oh, What a World, Jack Barrett, New York, NY, US
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2022
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— On the Verge, curated by Jeanette Gunnarsson and Lauren Johnson, Wetterling Gallery, Stockholm, SE
— Otherwise, Half Gallery, New York, NY, US
— MFA Thesis Exhibition, Wallach Gallery, New York, NY, US
— Chambres d’Amis: Home Truths, Office Baroque, Anvers, BE
— Fertile Plains ; Madeleine Bialke, Saskia Fleishman and Kelsey Shwetz, Dinner Gallery, New York, NY, US
2021
— Columbia Summer Show, ChaShaMa, New York, NY, US
— Class of 2022 First Year MFA Exhibition, Lenfest Center, New York, NY, US
— Unique Expressions, Hollis Taggart Gallery, NY, US
2020
— Captura Temporal, Casa Lu, Mexico City, MX
2019
— Slecny od Maliarskeho Stojana, Atelier XIII, Bratislava, SK
2018
— Her Horizon, Gallery Also, Los Angeles, CA, US
— Summer Heat, Ortega y Gasset, Brooklyn, NY, US
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2017
— Brave New Work, Geoffrey Young Gallery, Great Barrington, MA, US
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COLLECTIONS
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— Xiao Museum of Contemporary Art, RiZhao, Shandong, CN
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AWARDS / RESIDENCIES
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2021
— Choy Family Fellowship, New York, NY
— Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation 2nd Grant, Montreal, Canada
— Edward Mazzella Scholarship, New York, NY
— Ellen Gelman Fellowship, New York, NY
— Three Arts Club Scholarship
2020
— Explore and Create: Research and Creation Grant, Canada Council for the Arts
— Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant, Montreal, Canada
— Mayer Foundation Grant
— Teaching Assistant Fellowship, Columbia University
— AiR, Casa Lu, Mexico City, 2020
2019
— Travel Grant, Canada Council for the Arts
— Residency Grant, Canada Council for the Arts
— AiR, Atelier Hontianske Trstany 158, Slovakia
— AiR, Fellowship, Vermont Studio Center
EDUCATION
2022
— MFA, Visual Arts, Columbia University, New York, NY, US
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2018
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— Advanced Painting Intensive, Columbia University, New York, NY, US