The exhibition presents a selection of paintings, works on paper, and sculptures made from found objects, truck parts, and dirt. swiderski spends a lot of time with dirt—roaming Tucson’s ditches and washes with their dog, finding discarded material to transform into amulets and sometimes, if they’re lucky, stumbling upon mud or water. Traversing the washes and taking inspiration from them is tied to the traditions of western landscape painting, but for swiderski the landscape expands into both the personal and the political. In swiderski’s paintings, some images are formed through observation while others come forth as visions. Bucolic scenes are woven with less-than-idyllic motifs—power lines, cinder block walls, and urban discard. 

Trucks are a theme in these works, which swiderski sees as one of the great American signifiers, a symbol of power, freedom, gender, destruction, a means of escape. Delicate, careful objects and images are contrasted against crude equipment, a busted tailgate, or a faded jack stand. swiderski relies heavily on intuition and chance encounters with images and material, making the works come through as both apocalyptic and dream-like, as quiet prayers for the end times:    

my friend told me you can flail your way into anything
we have to take our chances while we can
courtesy flaps catch mud & pebbles to help you ignore 
that if you kick up the shit things get filthy
and there’s nothing sexy about desecration 
though i think we can all agree it's a thrill to rip around off the asphalt
but mud without water is dirt, and 
flaps can’t do anything for a dust trail that lingers long after the disruption

For this exhibition the artist would like to thank Leslie Swiderski, Jack Graydon, Robert Hurley, David Eckard, Mable P, Melissa Dudley, Inmn Neruin, Nika Kaiser, Joanne Willis, Sol Davis, Stephanie Murphy, Gray Hales, the Santa Cruz River wash, Kent’s Tools, Hyperstition Electrolyte Rave, a 1994 Toyota Pickup (blue), a 2007 Nissan Frontier (gray), a 2000 Toyota Tacoma (silver), a 1997 Toyota T100 (black). 

rocki swiderski (b. 1994, California) lives and works in Tucson, Arizona. Spanning disciplines, swiderski manipulates color and form to capture the untold essence of the desert southwest. Their focus is currently on boundaries, barriers, natural resources, looking at the sky, and daydreaming about the new world. swiderski’s work has been included in recent exhibitions at Stellarhighway (Brooklyn, NY), Rivalry Projects (Buffalo, NY), Georgetown Steamplant (Seattle, WA), and Arusha Gallery (London, EN). They are a 2024 recipient of Night Bloom, Grants for Artists through MOCA Tucson and the Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts. Currently swiderski also co-runs Precious Cargo, a gallery and artist publication project in Tucson, AZ. 

In 2022 they organized The Hole in the Fence, a group show at Everybody through The American Institute of Thoughts and Feelings. They exhibited with Everybody in Drawings, Paintings, maybe a Sculpture 2, a group exhibition in 2018.