Swizz Beatz Will Exhibit D*Face, Swoon, Cleon Paterson, Lyle Owerko, and Sandra Chevrier at SCOPE Miami Beach 2014

Swizz talks about the artists that he will be showing in his upcoming "The Dean Collection" exhibition in Miami.

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Image via Complex Original
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Last month, Kasseem "Swizz Beatz" Dean announced that he would be curating an exhibition at SCOPE Miami Beach 2014 called "The Dean Collection." In a interview published on Vulture today, Swizz confirmed that the artists that he will show in the exhibition are street artists D*Face, Swoon, and Cleon Peterson, filmmaker and photographer Lyle Owerko, and illustrator Sandra Chevrier, all of whom are artists that are represented in his personal collection.


During the interview, Swizz explained that he won't have a booth at SCOPE Miami Beach 2014, but he has found a way to let people know which works are a part of his exhibition. "I wanted people to walk the show and bump into them. I painted the walls black so you would know when you were looking at a Dean Collection piece." He also said that he chose the works (four commissions, plus a Swoon piece from her "Submerged Motherlands" show at Brooklyn Museum) based on color to match the black background. "The D*Face piece plays amazing with black. The Lyle Owerko boom box plays well with a black background. Also, I like it because it ties into the musical component—Swizz is musical guy, so there would be boom boxes here."

With the way he has been collecting art and promoting the #ArtLife over the past few years, there has been much speculation that Swizz Beatz would be opening a gallery in New York City someday, but he told Vulture that it's just not in the cards for him right now. "I don’t plan to compete with other galleries, and the only gallery I have now is in my personal home," said Swizz. "Gallery owners don’t know why I am here and what I am doing. They think I am powerful...I would never tell an artist not to use a gallery, but the art world is like the music industry, like an independent label coming in and showing an artist another way." He went on to say that he has a different business model than galleries that is less about the money and more about the artists. "I want to charge the artist as little as possible, just charge for curating, the bare basics to get the show going. With galleries, artists have to pay rent and all these different things."

SCOPE Miami Beach 2014 kicks off on Dec. 3 and runs through Dec. 7. To learn more about how Swizz got into collecting art, the party he is throwing for Swoon's birthday, and the curator's past as a graffiti writer named "Loco," check out the full interview at the Vulture link below.

[via Vulture]

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