Kayne Griffin Corcoran is pleased to present, “Three Concrete Sculptures,” a project with New York-based artist Sarah Crowner presented in the gallery’s courtyard. This presentation with the gallery, as the title suggests, will comprise of three concrete sculptures.
Sarah Crowner’s varied practice consists of paintings, sculptures, and installation-based works inviting the viewer to step inside—whether it be the work itself, or the world created around it. Her process involves meticulously examining and researching specific details of art history and re-contextualizing those visual cues and found forms into cut and sewn paintings, architectural elements, stage props, and costumes. For Crowner, shifts in scale and materials amplify simple forms and their relation to the human body.
For her project at Kayne Griffin Corcoran—which developed out of smaller-scale sculptures presented in Mexico City in 2018—Crowner presents three individually tinted concrete sculptures in-situ in the gallery’s courtyard and expanding on her vocabulary of forms, textures and colors. Her forms often take into consideration various perspective shifts and how the viewers engagement changes from a 2-d drawing and its translation into a 3-dimensional object. One of her sculptural forms for this exhibition is taken from a detail of a tree in an architectural drawing by Brazilian architect Paulo Mendes da Rocha (Casa Na Praia, Sao Paulo, 1970). The concrete medium itself alludes to Rocha’s use of the material roughout his practice. In another work, Crowner pulls from the world of Matisse—taking a fragment from one of his cut outs of a philodendron and materializing it into a three-dimensional work that one can perch on while spending time within the presented landscape.
Crowner’s painterly oeuvre comes into play primarily in her use of color, however her larger philosophy surrounding her practice governs how these pieces were conceived. Her work exists as a collaboration between art and design; using fragments from artists of the past and placing history itself as a main component of the medium. In an interview with curator Bartholomew Ryan in 2016, Crowner notes on how she wishes to make paintings “we can stand on, that our bodies can move on and into. Painting as a kind of architecture.” These works and the integration of paint during the casting process engage with Crowners interests in creating a space where a painting can move beyond its own boundaries. Whether working on canvas, concrete, or the stage, Crowner attempts to bridge the viewer to the work directly; creating an environment where they are face to face with the art and on the same plane, removing any hierarchal prerequisites that may exist.
Sarah Crowner (b. 1974, Philadelphia, PA) lives and works in New York. Recent projects include participation in the 57th edition of the Carnegie International (2018); scenography and costume design for Jessica Lang’s “Garden Blue” with the American Ballet Theater (2018); as well as the permanent site-specific installation at the Wright Restaurant at the Guggenheim Museum (2017.) In 2013 Crowner participated in a major survey exhibition on abstract painting at the Walker Art Center in MN and was included in the 2010 Whitney Biennial curated by Franceso Bonami and Gary Carrion-Murayari. Her work is held in the collections of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams, MA amongst others.
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