"Sarah Crowner: Around Painting" by Blaire Dessent

Brooklyn-based artist Sarah Crowner challenges us to expand our ideas about what painting is and what it can be. Through her work, which includes cut and sewn canvas paintings, ceramics, installation and theatre sets, she plays with colour, form and shape, creating a link between the visual and physical experience of art and art making.

Movement and physicality are essential components to Sarah Crowner’s artistic practice. In her ‘cut and sewn paintings, a process she began doing in 2009, canvases are stretched, painted, cut, forms are turned, twisted and played with to find the rhythm and relationships among them. “While at first glance people might see the colour and graphic aspect to the paintings, on closer inspection they see that it is has a joined line, that it is a physically constructed object,” she explains. This interest in wanting the viewer to engage more with the work led Crowner to create a raised wooden platform for an exhibition of her paintings in Brussels in 2011. “It was a simple idea that I wanted to create a kind of theatrical space within in a gallery but not have a performance, just have the paintings be hanging as the backdrops and the viewers become like the performers,” she says. This encounter activated the space, reinforcing the understanding of a body making the work and experiencing it as well.

In 2023, Crowner opened three major exhibitions across the United States, each of which, in its own way, reflects a conversation with an iconic 20th century artist and the architectural space of the exhibition. At the Pulitzer Art Foundation in St. Louis, Missouri, Crowner’s installation, Around Orange, is a direct response to Ellsworth Kelly’s monumental wall sculpture, Blue Black, which is on permanent display at the museum. Kelly (1923-2015), who was known for his exuberant play of colour and shape is a perfect artistic partner for Crowner to engage with. Curated by Stephanie Weissberg, the exhibition includes three installations; On the exterior wall of the entrance courtyard is a 17-foot long by 6-foot tall tile mosaic composed of handmade, red and orange glazed terracotta tiles made in collaboration with Ceramics Suro. At first look, the bright pop of orange fills the eyes, yet because they are handmade, the tiles have softly varying tones and even textures that lends depth and movement to the installation. Inside, viewers step up onto a birch wood platform, designed by Crowner, to experience an intimate look at two smaller works by Kelly: a white-on-white collage of curves, and a painting titled White Plaque: Bridge Arch and Reflection (1956). Further into the space, several large canvas of red and orange or deep blues and blacks, that measure a total of 75-feet in length, are placed on a long wall that leads to where Kelly’s Blue Black painting can be seen. Crowner’s bold red and orange are the colour contrast to the deep blues of Kelly and the flow of her paintings stand against the strict verticality of his painting, creating a playful exchange between the two artists.

Read full article at tlmagazine.com