Swim #3
One of our favourite platform magazines returns for a third issue featuring a front cover that threatens to monopolise attention.
Each copy of this issue of Swim has been spray-painted to give it a unique finish, the result of almost 24 hours of hard graft by the magazine team back in June. The graft was worth it – the image above gives a sense of the variation. But we want to concentrate here on the content inside, for our latest Page 23 review.
Born from ‘a desire to showcase our friends’ work’, Swim does more than just that, offering a space to investigate process too. Fitting then, that page 23 (above) of Swim offers up young artist Marvin Leuvrey, who is working in a space he describes as ‘the intersection of art and technology’. The left-hand page, a block of text, holds plenty of room for Leuvrey to delve into a detailed statement about his work. The behind-the-scenes aspect of Swim is at its heart – unlike other glossy art mags, this one has clarity and accessibility built in.
This issue is subtitled ‘Changing Mediums’, and seeks to explore both how and why artists might shift from photography to painting, or from ceramics to poetry. Conceptually, Leuvrey’s work is about places of transience, tangibly it is literally between mediums. The artist explains that his process that is made up of a combination of different mediums, including but not limited to photoshop and 3D animation. Leuvrey’s line about his work being a ‘metaphor for the ubiquity of digital realities’ was particularly interesting, illustrated by the abstract blue ‘paintings’ he produces, images of the spaces between 2D and 3D.
The mag is jam-packed full of artists, and not every feature is like this page 23. Half of the magazine is under the header ‘Previously Made’, while the other half is called ‘New Experiments’. For the second half of the mag, the Swim team reached out to artist Krystof Witold, asking him to make a brand new piece of conceptual art, just for the mag. The result? ‘A music video for the single most important postmodern adult soft-pop duo of the 21st Century, The Nollys’.
Every artist in Swim discusses shifting mediums, each inspired by something entirely different – be it love, pain, travel or simply weariness with their current work. Later in the mag I was particularly struck by artist Apolina Sokol’s statement on ‘changing mediums’, attributing her segue into writing to the loss of a close friend, explaining that painting was no longer ‘enough’.
For art students stuck in a rut, for those who want to get a feel for what emerging artists are up to, or those who simply just want to understand the art world, look no further than Swim.
Editor: DanielMilroy Maher
Designers: Archie Nock and Samuel White