Ludwig Schwarz
Ludwig Schwarz is a performance artist, performing the role dutifully day in and day out. For many years, Schwarz has maintained a studio practice
relentlessly pursuing the poetic testament of his personal life, cultural observations, institutional critique, the Dallas Mavericks, the Dallas Cowboys, and perfecting a brisket recipe, each of which and more have been subjects of his work. Many artists have practices described as, “the intersection of” two disciplines or preoccupations. Ludwig Schwarz’s work is a universe worth of intersections, all with variable dimensions. Such is the Schwarzian narrative; reliably truth telling while performing in the spectacle and theater of art.
Working with sculpture, painting, video, sound and installation, Schwarz deftly manages to inject each with bravado and restraint. For Schwarz, “the object isn’t an endgame, it’s a conceptual link and a marker of time, always in play and stage ready.”
Schwarz's situationally narrative sculptures, paintings and installations operate by unapologetically asking the viewer to consider not only the mostly incongruous collection of objects they are looking at, but where they are located, their circumstance (often tragi-comic) and the sorted, messy, and often absurd relationship between the two. As Bill Davenport noted in the 2014 Glasstire review of Schwarz’s Retrospective, “each new work is another instance of Schwarz applying Schwarz, like barbecue sauce, to new situations.”
Always on the lookout for a possible Great Moment in Painting (Great Moments in Painting #'s 2 through 5 having been discovered by the artist intermittently and without warning over the past 20 plus years), the artist, whose work contemplates the sacred in the mundane, all things are up for grabs. Despite his ongoing interventions, it is undeniable that Schwarz is an exceptional painter. In an April 2014 feature about Schwarz, Dallas Morning News art critic Rick Brettell wrote of the artist, “I am surer than ever that Schwarz is a major artist. Indeed, he is quite possibly the most important painter who has lived in our city in the last generation…”
In 2018, the Dallas Museum of Art acquired a suite of eight five by four-foot paintings from Schwarz’s 2016 Desktop exhibition.
Ludwig Schwarz earned a BFA from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, TX and an MFA at the School of Visual Arts New York. Recent exhibitions include; Arrival, Departure, Arrival, 214 Projects, Dallas, TX (2019); Untitled (series of eight paintings), The Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX (2018); Some Twenty Year Old Works on Paper and Two New Sculptures, The Box Company, Dallas, TX (2017); Rest Stop, Makebish, New York, NY (2015); Encounters, Lump, Raleigh, N.C. (2015); Ludwig Schwarz: Retrospective (1990–2014), Oliver Francis Gallery, Dallas, TX (2014); the 2012 and 2010 Brucennial, NY; Galerie Carolyn Heinz, Hamburg, Germany (2011); Leo Castelli Gallery, NY (2011); Re-Seeing the Contemporary: Selected from the Collection, Dallas Museum of Art (2010); The New Authentics, The Spertus Museum, Chicago, IL and The Rose Art Museum of Brandeis University, Walthum, MA (2008); Road Agent Gallery, Dallas, TX (2007); Freight and Volume, NY, NY (2005); Q.E.D., Los Angeles, CA (2005); Angstrom Gallery, Dallas, TX (2003) and Scope Art Fair (with Angstrom Gallery), Gershwin Hotel, NY, NY (2002). Ludwig Schwarz lives and works in Dallas, Texas.
Audio interview with Ben Lima and the Athenaeum Review.
Click here to purchase the exhibition catalog for Moving Pictures.
Conduit Gallery Exhibitions
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2022Conduit Gallery, Dallas, TX
2019 214 Projects, Dallas, TX
2018 Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX
2017 The Box Company, Dallas, TX
2016 Conduit Gallery, Dallas, TX
2015 Makebish, New York, NY
2015 Lump, Raleigh, N.C.
2014 Dallas Biennial, Oliver Francis Gallery, Dallas, TX
2014 Conduit Gallery, Dallas, TX
2012 Conduit Gallery, Dallas, TX
2008 Optical, Houston, TX
2007 Road Agent, Dallas, TX
2007 Sunday L.E.S., New York, NY
2005 Sala Diaz, San Antonio, TX
2005 FREIGHT+VOLUME, New York, NY
2005 Q.E.D., Los Angeles, CA
2004 Three Walls, San Antonio, TX
2003 Angstrom Gallery, Dallas, TX
2003 Angstrom Gallery; Village Jewelry and Loan, Dallas, TX
2002 Scope Art Fair ( Gershwin Hotel), Manhattan, NY
2001 Angstrom Gallery, Dallas, TX
2001 Lump, Raleigh, NC
2000 Angstrom Gallery, Dallas, TX
1997 Angstrom Gallery, Dallas, TX
1995 McKinney Avenue Contemporary, Dallas, TX
Selected Group Exhibitions
2023 Chateau, Dallas, TX
2022 Site 131, Dallas, TX
2021 Lump, Raleigh, NC
2019 The Power Station, Dallas, TX
2017 Rudolph Blume Fine Art/Artscan, Houston, TX
2017 Devin Borden Gallery, Houston, TX
2014 Conduit Gallery, Dallas, TX
2014 Art Palace, Houston, TX
2013 The Brandon, Houston, TX
2012 Kirk Hopper Fine Art, Dallas, TX
2012 Brucennial 2012, New York, NY
2012 Oliver Francis Gallery, Dallas, TX
2012 Fallas Dart Air, Shamrock Studios, Dallas, TX
2012 Dallas Biennial, Online, Volume 2
2011 Galerie Carolyn Heinz, Hamburg, Germany
2011 Leo Castelli Gallery, New York, NY Curator
2010 Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX
2010 Cris Worley Fine Arts, Dallas, TX
2010 Barry Whistler Gallery, Dallas, TX
2010 Brucennial 2010: Miseducation, New York, NY
2010 Centraltrak, Dallas, TX, curator: Kate Sheerin
2009 Fort Worth Contemporary Arts, Ft. Worth, TX, curator: Christina Rees
2009 Okay Mountain, Austin TX, curator: Nathan Greene
2009 And/Or Gallery, Dallas, TX, curator: Keri Oldham
2008 Inman Gallery, Houston, TX
2008 The Rose Art Museum of Brandeis University, Waltham, MA
2008 Pompidou Center, Paris, France
2007 Angstrom Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2007 Road Agent, Dallas, TX
2007 Spertus Museum, Chicago, IL, curator Staci Borris
2006 The Contemporary, Dallas, TX, Galveston Arts Center, Galveston, TX
2005 Arthouse at the Jones Center, Austin, TX
2005 Dallas Center for Contemporary Art, Dallas, TX
2004 Gavin Brown at Passerby, New York, NY
2004 Angstrom Gallery, Dallas, TX
2004 Art Museum of Southeast Texas, Beaumont, TX
2004 Allston Skirt Gallery, Boston, MA
2003 Kunstbunker Tumulka, Munich, Germany
2003 Angstrom Gallery, Dallas, TX
2003 Angstrom Gallery, Dallas, TX
2002 Scope Art Fair, Gershwin Hotel, solo, (with Angstrom Gallery), NY, NY
2001, Big as Texas, Diverse Works, Houston, TX
2001 Herbert Heindl & Ludwig Schwarz, Munich, Germany
2000 Inman Gallery, Houston, TX, curator: Bill Davenport
1997 Video Flash, Hohenthal und Bergen, Cologne, Germany, curator: Kenny Schachter
1996 Fool's Rain, Institute of Contemporary Art, London, England, curator: Max Wigram
1995 Texas Abstract, ArtPace, San Antonio; McKinney Avenue Contemporary, Dallas, TX, curator: Frances Colpitt
1994 The First Fundraising Event to Benefit American Fine Arts CO., American Fine Arts, NY, NY
1994 Secret Agent Artist, PS 1, Long Island City, NY, curator: Thomas Busch
1993 Texas Biennial, Dallas Artists Research and Exhibitions, Dallas, TX
1993 Cartoonal Knowledge, Dooley LeCappellaine Gallery, New York, NY
1991 New Generations New York, Carnegie Mellon Art Gallery, Pittsburgh, PA, curator: Elaine King
1990 The Cross Show, X Art, New Orleans, LA
1989 American Fine Arts, Co., New York, NY