jen schwarting

Jen Schwarting examines American notions of progress and prosperity. Through both linguistic and semiotic structures, she investigates the boundaries of agency and opportunity delineated by gender, class and labor. Responding to the economic downturn, she negotiates a fear of fallout with Nylon Shoot, her most recent series of sculptures.

Hand-sewn from an alternating pattern of lightweight fabrics and hung flat against the wall, Nylon Shoot projects a graphic image, between a stripe and a target. Echoing the seamed, circular form of an open parachute, the work hovers between abstraction and representation— as an object, but also as a sign.

Nylon Shoot (red) references both the red and white stripes of the American flag and Daniel Buren’s striped-fabric interventions. Along the lines and conceptual parameters that Buren was concerned with, the parachutes are fashioned from everyday commercial material. Made with cheap, dollar-per- yard nylon lining, they fold like a sheet and fit into a large envelope— an inexpensive means of making and transporting large work— from New York to London, St. Petersburg, Helsinki and Los Angeles. The sculptures are designed to participate in the global economy while equally emphasizing their own economy of means.

Nylon Shoot (gold) makes a more overt reference to the economy, illustrating the term "golden parachute." A safety net for banks, corporations and heads of companies— cast repeatedly this year as American industries have neared collapse— a golden parachute signals economic instability. It indicates fiscal irresponsibility, injustice and the disparity between wealthy executives, and average workers who have lost jobs, savings and security. So too, it reflects a sweeping climate of anxiety and uncertainty.

At the center of Schwarting's work is the question of agency, and much of her work in sculpture and collage addresses the limits of opportunity and equality. A series of her recent collages focused on contemporary images of women in clerical office positions, and the relationship between gender and labor— a primary point of discourse in feminist art history.

Nylon Shoot also speaks to this history. The value of women’s labor was an issue that artists in the 1970s challenged by employing craft-based materials and techniques, like sewing. And the parachute’s pattern of converging lines references the central-core imagery that defined the visual language of radical feminism. Consequently, the work questions how the meaning of these political codes and intersection of past and present ideologies register today.

Jen Schwarting received her MFA from the California Institute of the Arts and her BFA from Cornell University. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.