The Swan’s Script II is one of three exhibitions in a series curated by The Sphinx. The Swan’s Script II draws inspiration from Hilma af Klint’s The Swan series (1914–1915), a progression of swan paintings. The exhibition imagines the swan less as an emblem than as a switching device, allowing form to pivot, digress and multiply with devotion — from figuration to abstraction — through an array of narrative and plotless utterances. The symbol of the swan disguising, doubling, and mirroring its own image may be framed as an euphemism of transformation in an otherwise continuous being, as portrayed between Acts II and III of Swan Lake, when the principal dancer changes costume to transfigure from Odette to Odile.
The swans in af Klint’s paintings present a play of opposites, quadrants, and alchemical forms; similarly, M.C. Escher’s Swan (1956) wood engravings evoke computational formats and patterning through swan shadows, jagged plumage, and infinity loops. In the Swan’s Script II, we aim to capture a language that opens itself to phenomenological potentials, interweaving birds and abstraction, creating persuasions that curve and fold as poetics.
