Erick Swenson

Erick Swenson’s installations create scenes of haunting perfection. Inspired by museum exhibits, set design, film special effects, and model making, Swenson crafts every minute detail of his tableaux, creating simulated, highly romantic scenes of that often exceed the ideals of nature. Spanning more than 7 meters, Swenson’s Untitled is a sub-zero oasis of mythical blizzard. Styrofoam snow and polyurethane ice engulf expertly moulded cobblestones, fabricating a spectacle of wintery Bavariana fairytale. Within the gathering drifts, a fallen deer strains against death in a sublime allegorical moment. Erick Swenson’s Ne Plus Ultra poses the decaying skull of a deer as a cryptic relic. Swenson captures every uncomfortable detail: white flesh peeled, exposing raw tissue and weathered bone. Cast in resin, Swenson’s sculpture doesn’t exude the expected revulsion of gore, but rather a beatific reverence. In its serene otherworldly aura Swenson’s perished beast evokes a more horrific haunting as a torn cheek reveals a row of carnivorous teeth, and flayed brow appears embossed with mysterious scrimshaw. Through attenuate craftsmanship, Swenson merges ideas of the romantic sublime with chilling surrealism, creating an object suggestive of dark fiction.