Spencer Sweeney
‘moonlit blue’

Ever resistant to categorisation, Sweeney draws inspiration from his lived experience and persona as a vital presence in the New York cultural scene. Sweeney’s idiosyncratic talent enables him to traverse the multiplicity of styles and modes working within visual art, music and performance. Indeed, in Sweeney’s practice we witness a desire to celebrate art’s function in life and the world’s potential as a receptive, unrestrictive creative space. For Frieze Sweeney will present a new large scale painting. Sweeney’s imagery is centered on the human figure, ranging from semiabstract reclining nudes to surreal, ambiguously gendered self-portraits. Conveying intense emotion through lively color and deft handling of paint, his art maps the physical and psychological spaces occupied by the body. Included in our preview is a work from Sweeney’s ‘Party Paintings’ series. In these works Sweeney produced paintings of posters for events which happened at his now closed New York club Santos Party House. The piece EPDM Party Paitning is included in Sweeney’s current show at The Brant Foundation, which runs until September 2022.