Impulse Magazine: EXPO Chicago Review
A big thank you to Annette LePigue for including Rivalry Projects in her review of EXPO Chicago for Impulse Magazine. We are highlighting the review about rocki’s work below and linking to the full review here.
Rivalry Projects:
rocki swiderski
In turn, Buffalo, New York’s Rivalry Projects offers the thoughtful ecological concerns of Tucson-based artist rocki swiderski. swiderski takes what they call “unstable sites” as points of departure to explore how the landscape of their primary residence functions as the foundational material for the tangible and ideological struggles of our time. With a border that is a militarized zone of conflict and conduct, and terrain that suffers from near-constant drought and extreme weather exacerbated by climate change, the country’s southwest region exists as both place and idea, the borders of the two notions in constant fluctuation. Considering this instability through sculpture, paintings, and works on paper, swiderski paints both what they see and imagine when they grapple with the complications of their current home. swiderski’s 2025 Puddle series is especially gripping: works on paper in acrylic and gouache that showcase fragments of landscapes both real and imagined. Each piece presents reflections of trees, grass, and sky in puddles of saturated color at various angles. swiderski’s Puddles resemble the territory lines of a map and call to mind the artist’s own musings on the presence of scum in, on, and around water; scum for swiderski isn’t just the presence of dirt on liquid but raw material that impacts how and what a person sees. The metaphor here feels achingly appropriate for the southwest is a land under constant scrutiny, negotiation, and surveillance.
caption: rocki swiderski, red puddle, 2025. Acrylic and gouache on paper, 25 3/8 x 19 3/8 inches, 27 1/4 x 21 3/8 x 1 3/4 inches, framed. Courtesy of the artist and Rivalry Projects.