The Swimmer

JUNE 6-AUGUST 9, 2024

Curated by Jonathan Rider

Opening reception: Thursday, June 6, 6-8 PM

The FLAG Art Foundation is pleased to present The Swimmer, an expansive group exhibition inspired by John Cheever’s 1964 short story of the same name. Artists include Henni Alftan, Leonard Baby, Conrad Bakker, Dike Blair, Martin Boyce, Katherine Bradford, Zoe Crosher, Nancy Diamond, Elmgreen & Dragset, Tony Feher, Robert Gober, Jim Hodges, Reggie Burrows Hodges, Ludovic Knoth, Amy Park, Ed Ruscha, Melanie Schiff, Cindy Sherman, Cynthia Talmadge, Deanna Templeton, Paul Thek, Stephen Truax, and others.

Published in The New Yorker in the wake of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, John Cheever’s The Swimmer is emblematic of mid-century America’s changing perception of its own relationship to class, idealism, and failure. Cheever’s protagonist, Neddy Merrill—who “might have been compared to a summer’s day”—embarks on the novel adventure to swim home by way of his affluent neighbor’s swimming pools. What begins as a carefree midsummer Sunday devolves into something altogether different and nefarious; Neddy’s life and his grip on reality disappear, pool by pool, the closer he comes to finishing his journey and returning home… whether that’s the same day or perhaps many years later.

FLAG’s exhibition similarly confuses time and unfolds through a series of disappearances in bodies of water—in pools, lakes, and oceans—through serial works that concern loss and losing oneself. Navigating themes inherent in The Swimmer and Cheever’s broader oeuvre, including alcoholism, grandiosity, loss of innocence, selective memory, privilege, sexuality, etc., the exhibition trains an eye to the crumbling of an American dream, set against the glittering backdrop of a string of swimming pools. The ninth floor of the exhibition closely aligns itself with Cheever’s narrative and features a variety of painting, photography, and sculpture in which the body is suggested, but not depicted, positioning the viewer as the “swimmer” in space.  The exhibition’s tenth floor focuses almost exclusively on the figure—the body in water—and explores night swimming, using the pool as an intimate, self-contained site for mystery and experimentation.

About:

Jonathan Rider is an artist, writer, and director of The FLAG Art Foundation, where he has worked since 2014. Rider has organized solo presentations by artists Tarek Atoui, Ashley Bickerton, Cynthia Daignault, Nicole Eisenman, Elmgreen & Dragset, Sam Gilliam, among others, and thematic group exhibitions, including Friends & Lovers (2024), In Search of the Miraculous (2022), and I will wear you in my heart of heart (2021), Dime-Store Alchemy (2018), and The Times (2017). His writing has appeared in Art in America.

FLAG would like to acknowledge the participating artists, galleries, and private lenders for their generous loans of artworks to this exhibition.

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