Luhring Augustine is delighted to announce Hot Light, Hard Light, an exhibition of new sculptures and paintings by Sarah Crowner. Marking the artist’s first solo presentation with the gallery, the exhibition will open at our Tribeca location on March 16 and run through May 4.
Hot Light, Hard Light is an installation conceived of by Crowner in her Brooklyn studio, where the perception of the form, shadow, and color of the works shifts constantly throughout the day in conjunction with the movement of the sun. Often edging their way toward monochromes, the abstract paintings—created by joining panels of painted and cut canvas—are rendered in assertive shades of orange, red, and magenta, interrupted here and there by moments of night-black and off-white. A series of new bronze sculptures sit atop pedestals; installed throughout the space their highly reflective and curved surfaces float somewhere between the potency of the paintings and the openness of the room.
Just as color is not a static element, Crowner’s works shift and morph according to their environment. Dapple and spill sometimes supersede gesture and brushstroke, while the vibration of her saturated hues feels heightened by the sun’s comparatively languid light. In Hot Light, Hard Light Crowner's paintings extend beyond themselves, doubling as both the subjects and foils for the bronze stones. The sculptures’ polished surfaces reflect and refract the paintings, and in moments their curves look stained with color—a red, a magenta. The new paintings and sculptures installed in Hot Light, Hard Light together conduct a rousing contemplation on the temperature and temperament of color.
Sarah Crowner earned a BA from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1996 and an MFA from Hunter College, City University of New York in 2002. In 2023, the Pulitzer Arts Foundation hosted Sarah Crowner: Around Orange, an exhibition of three new site-specific artworks responding to the architecture of the Pulitzer’s Tadao Ando building and Ellsworth Kelly’s monumental wall sculpture, Blue Black. Also in 2023, the Hill Art Foundation presented The Sea, the Sky, a Window, a project by Sarah Crowner placing site-specific works by the artist in dialogue with sculptures and paintings from the Hill Collection, as well as key loaned works, most notably works by Cy Twombly. Other notable recent solo presentations of Crowner’s work include Serpentear at Museo Amparo in Puebla, Mexico (2022), a recently published catalogue for the show is now available through DAP; a 2022 commission by the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, TX for a site-specific tile installation that will remain on view into 2024; and a 2016 solo exhibition at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams, MA that was accompanied by a major monograph. Her work is in the collections of major international institutions including Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA; The Contemporary Austin, TX; Dallas Museum of Art, TX; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams, MA; Art Institute of Chicago, IL; and Walker Art Museum, Minneapolis, MN.
Serpentear, a new monograph on Crowner, has been published on the occasion of her 2022 solo project at the Museo Amparo, Puebla, Mexico, available through DAP here.
