That exhibition — a dense, imagined cityscape peopled by the figures she had earlier worked into the fabric of the city itself — signaled for the first time, for many, the breadth of Swoon’s vision. Here, at age 27, was an artist who possessed the technical rendering skills of the Old Masters, the boldness to put this work directly in public space where it would be obliterated in a matter of months or years, and also the ability to imagine a fully integrated installation environment, where the cacophonous, dream-like imagery that was before woven into the bodies of the figures she depicted was made manifest in immersive, three-dimensional, architectural form. Writing for The New York Times, Roberta Smith called that show “an engrossing perception of life on the move, conjured up by an artist whose talent is all revved up with lots of places to go.” Roberta Smith probably didn’t know just how accurate her words would be. In the three years since, Swoon has taken her paper and print work to cities, galleries, and museums around the world, from Moscow to Ukraine to London to LA (and that’s only naming a few). Beyond that, she has imagined a mode of work that literally moves. In 2006 she initiated a collaborative project titled The Miss Rockaway Armada, a collective that expanded to include over its lifespan close to 100 individuals, who built rafts from scrap material and navigated the Mississippi River from Minneapolis to St. Louis, presenting performances in towns along the way. The project was non-hierarchical in design, experimental for everyone involved, and resulted in something that still brings a glow to the eyes of those involved when mentioned today. Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea is Swoon’s second exhibition with Deitch, heir to Miss Rockaway, and in many ways, the fusion of these various modes of work. Following the three-week journey to New York, during which the boats will dock in small towns and present free performances, they will round the southern tip of Manhattan, travel back up the East River, and converge on Deitch Studios in Long Island City, where they will link up with a massive gallery exhibition. A “waterline” has been articulated in the gallery space, with Swoon’s figures peopling the room, and tied by ropes to the boats docked outside. The themes apparent in Swoon’s work — her commitment to taking her work beyond “the art world” and engaging public space, the boldness of believing that space can be transformed and energized as a site of communication, and the sorcery of a visual language that is simultaneously human and temporal, seductive and ambiguous, are writ large in this journey. “It’s like the world is your medium,” Swoon says, “the river is your medium, the wall is your medium. I want the feeling of somebody being like, ‘as known as this world is… there are still parts of this very world that I don’t get.” Swoon is that rare artist for whom the creative act is fundamentally an act of agency — the magician for whom the articulation of themes and ideas is as important as the context, the audience, and the gesture of risk-taking in the literal sense as much as the creative act of attempting the untried. Swoon’s talent is more revved up than ever, and we can only wait to see where she’ll go from here.