Sarah Crowner

Casey Kaplan
121 W 27th Street
Appointments encouraged
New York
Chelsea
Oct 29th 2020 — Jan 16th 2021

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Sarah Crowner’s third exhibition with Casey Kaplan presents a new group of large-scale color field paintings.

As a painter whose process involves cutting canvas from patterns, painting the pieces, and sewing them back together, Crowner pushes the boundaries of the medium. Her collage-like approach refashions the materials of her old paintings, lending a playfully generative air to the formal process of using leftover shapes to create something new. She compares her pieces to aspects of theater, in that they function as set pieces, backdrops, or even programs for performance. For Crowner, they are proposals for something new.

Executed in brilliant jewel-like colors that seem to cavort across the canvas, Crowner’s latest paintings tell stories through geometric and abstract compositions. Medusa with Open Forms (2020) [pictured], for example, recalls its mythological namesake’s serpentine hair with pulsing red and blue undulations that draw the eye around the canvas. This kineticism runs throughout the entire exhibition as Crowner weaves together alluring compositions, each one a visual narrative told in exuberant color.

Sarah Crowner, Medusa with open forms, 2020. Acrylic on canvas, sewn 70 x 60 inches. Courtesy the artist and Casey Kaplan, New York. Photography: Dario Lasagni.