Ian Swanson (b. 1983, Detroit, MI) received a BFA from Wayne State University in 2007, and an MFA from Pratt Institute in 2013. Swanson’s work spans painting, sculpture, audio and installation; working in territory where the slippage between representation and the ineffable brings figuration and abstraction into vivid conversation. His works illicit a sense of depersonalization, a human image disappearing into surface, objects disobeying clarity. A thought space, elegantly damaged but unpretentious, obfuscated by puzzlement and rumination. There are delays and echoes, passages of time one needs to reflect upon and what surface they must scan to find entry. Hovering between brutality and sweetness; fantasy and reality – his works illustrate a universal spirit of the tensions implicit in darkness and light, life and death.