Off the Court Racket with Ludwig Schwarz

A guide to being rookie of the month in 21 seasons

Soon after getting hired as the preparator at the McKinney Avenue Contemporary in Dallas more than two decades ago, I met an artist freshly returned from a stint in New York, accompanied by a refreshingly perplexing body of work that caught me off guard with a wry smile and a relentless persistence. During the course of installing Ludwig Schwarz’s first solo exhibition at The MAC (along with the artist and curator Tom Moody), we wedged a jam box inside the gallery wall playing a loop from the band Boston’s Feelin’ Satisfied, which inquired, then promptly suggested: “Oh are you feelin’ satisfied, come on let us give your mind a ride.”

Accompanying this muffled aural possession of the galleries were two functionally deficient bed sculptures: one, a partially crated twin mattress addressing the viewer like a hash brown escaping its paper sleeve (whose title humorously denied the potential spilling of seed en Español); the second being a barebones metal bedframe placed appropriately on the floor, with only a flimsy, mattress-sized piece of plywood laid there, not ready to support anything given the chance.

I was confounded and smitten all at once; a feeling that mostly proves elusive both in art and life, even more so at first glance. Ludwig Schwarz had reeled me in and closed the cooler and we were headed to unknown shores, even as there were eight or so tablecloth-sized, garishly colored abstractions now lining the walls. I had tried unconvincingly to get them to wrap the row of paintings tightly around the corner, instead of breaking them up in a standard, formal dialogue on facing walls.

In the smaller gallery, amid a wall of faded, holey “Classic Rock” concert tees on wire hangers, hung one much-worn souvenir that had been altered with bones from previously eaten chicken drumettes jutting out rhythmically from its bottom edge, like a carnivore’s bizarre fringe. A lone, off-white rubber ball sat on the floor in the far corner, slowly beckoning a welcoming listener by inserting an unfortunate earworm Sharpie-d in script along its presented belly: “Desperado.” “Why don’t you come to your senses?” mouthed my radio brain.

Ludwig and I have been fast friends since that time; we have eaten and taken libations together, played in and watched numerous games of basketball, pushed musical tastes on one another, watched each other fight for love, but mostly laughed during pauses at the absurdity of it all.

I dropped by his Exposition Park studio just to kick the tires one day this summer. There was a fleet of ten human-sized canvases ambling through the hallway and across the length of the long wall, performing various states of completion. Ludwig had asked me over to see them specifically and I was at a loss, not quite able to grasp the vocabulary as of yet, looking for assistance among the troves and stacks of previous works whose familiarity I craved. I poked around a bit at what I thought was going on both within the grouping and in regard to a few individual works, but ultimately offered no real insight.

Cut to the fall when word began to circulate that a suite of paintings by Ludwig had been purchased by the Dallas Museum of Art. Originally exhibited in Desktop at Conduit Gallery in 2016, the eight color-saturated abstractions differ mostly in palette and composition and are only loosely bound by some muted cloudlike fields (typically read as background) and several hard-edge patterns and shapes (read as cutaways, covers or objects). I erroneously assumed it was the same grouping I had seen a few months back and was unable to properly digest then, which left me feeling like I had really missed out on something.

Studio view.

Yet-to-be-titled works in transition.

In early December, we decided to meet up again to watch a Mavs game on TV, as it had been a while for me and there was a Slovenian rookie signed this summer that had everybody talking. I arrived at the bar downstairs from his studio aptly named for the neighborhood. It was completely barren, silent, and the screens dark. I texted Ludwig the news and walked to the craft beer bar on the corner, knowing he’d be less than thrilled. He was a little late and explained that he had been eating a field greens salad in his car. Even though we’d convinced the bartender to put the game on, we soon departed for a local dive where we knew it’d be on with less fussy beer options.

The 19-year-old rookie sliced through half-court, bouncing around like a young stallion testing his speed and gallop as he angled toward the basket. He was, as Ludwig had informed me, Rookie of the Month for his first two straight months playing in the league. Meanwhile, the elder statesman of the franchise was rehabbing after ankle surgery and facing a delayed return. There were rumors, but he remained on the bench in street clothes as his eventual retirement sat upon the horizon of the season. We closed out the game with a short trip to another bar, looking for sound to go with the visuals, then rounded out the evening talking about the best bagels in the ’hood.

Untitled (I voted), 2016.

Studio entrance in Exposition Park.

I returned to Ludwig’s studio a few weeks after the home team’s win to take in the group of paintings once more. Since my last visit, there was a pair of chair sculptures present: a broken wooden cane-seater saddled with a net of six-pack holders and twine in its seat and a standard black folding model draped with more than a dozen AC adaptors resting in a semi-circle on the floor. I could see little changes here and there in the large canvases spread across the studio, but also noticed since the unveiling of the DMA purchase the not-so-subtle differences between the two bodies of work. The density and tension held in the eight at the museum had drifted off-screen in the newer, larger works, leaving the viewer bathed in background noise, patchy formations, and unsettling negative space. Objects and patterns became smaller and slowly moved out toward the edges as well. I gestured to them, still looking for an answer, to which Ludwig simply replied, “boredom.”

I had taken a photo of the wall label for the paintings’ brief debut at the museum and was surprisingly touched while reading a lengthy quote by the artist outlining a personal moment (gulls on a ferry, windswept wifey hair, the works) that was tangentially related to the concept behind Desktop. I reread the passage and then called to double-check on those song lyrics sampled for his first solo show at The MAC. I reached him driving around a massive cemetery with little luck trying to locate the funeral he was planning on attending with his wife Marjorie (a wonderful artist in her own right). I heard him softly bark inquiries from his rolled-down car window.

Somewhat embarrassed for both of us, I quickly let him go after getting the chorus affirmed and looked again at the photo of the eight compositions lining the ramp at the museum. They were in the same order as originally displayed at Conduit Gallery, the two that had hung on a smaller wall at the gallery were simply tacked onto the right side. The slight incline leveled out at the handrail at left and the repetition produced by the tight hang felt like the blip of billboard details barely noticed on the freeway. I have often tried to remember such moments glimpsed while driving but always forgot them nonetheless, wondering all the while if Ludwig had ultimately found his destination or if he had simply moved on down the road.

BY BRANDON KENNEDY

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JOHN SMITH