Bio

Gray Swartzel (he/they) is a New York based artist who draws upon the language of grandiose hyperbole and colloquialism which they make visual through lens-based media works. With excess and sensuality, Swartzel conjures and constructs fantasies of the familial as they conflate the real and the ideal. Recursive Tapestry mines the collective history of southern textiles as well as the experiences of the artist’s parents and grandparents who worked at the Chatham textile mill in western North Carolina. Compositing scanned collage alongside Swartzel's own pictures, Recursive Tapestry exists as kaleidoscopic animation traversing the digital spaces they fabricate. In constant motion, the viewer is presented with a hypnotic meditation of materiality, fusing the then and now, queering the past and present. Swartzel holds a BFA and a Minor in Women's and Gender Studies from UNC-Chapel Hill, an MFA from Carnegie Mellon University, and has shown at The CICA Museum in South Korea, The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, The Archaeological Museum of Messenia in Greece, The Buffalo International Film Festival, Art Madrid, and others.