Mike Swaney

His work

Plate Thief Leitmtif

Mike Swaney (Kimberley, Canada, 1978)

2025, Barcelona

Mosaic, tiles and glazed ceramic on wood, 150 x 140 cm.

Swaney revisits and reinterprets trencadís, deeply rooted in Barcelona’s tradition through Gaudí, and turns material into a carrier of meaning and memory. The work incorporates found materials and ceramic pieces created from the artist’s own drawings. The working process is based on material experimentation, where each fragment functions as a record of time and labour. The work is situated within the curatorial core Matter, memory and territory, where history, memory and material experience converge.

The perspective it brings to the collection:

We have included Mike Swaney in the collection because his practice stands out both for its conceptual rigour and for its technical experimentation and the uniqueness of its creative process. His visual language is structured around play as a driving force for thought and production, as he improvises, experiments and embraces chance as an active part of the work. In this sense, many of his projects arise from collaborative and participatory processes, so that creation is built in an open and shared way. In this way, Swaney brings an innovative perspective on contemporary creation to the collection, based on process, relationship and experimentation.