Sarah Crowner’s sewn and painted abstract canvases come formally out of a strong Modernist tradition and can be seen as proposals for theatrical backdrops while her sculptures suggest maquettes of stage flats for a dance performance.
Together, the paintings and sculptures recast questions around painting; they offer the idea that a painting or a sculpture might function as a proposal for something else, giving them a new role and function in space, one that invites movement and interaction. In the exhibition the viewer can assume the role of the "performer".
Crowner uses art history as a medium, splicing, cutting and pasting, in an attempt to reengage it. In her new works Crowner addresses moments from the early twentieth century when the avant-gardes were collaborating freely and cross-fertilizing from music to theater to painting to poetry. Her frame of reference includes Sophie Taeuber-Arp’s sculptural puppets and set decorations, Maria Jarema’s abstract theatrical backdrops, and futurist theater experiments.
The centerpiece of the exhibition is Kurtyna Teatru (after Maria Jarema), 2012, a stage curtain based on a composition by Maria Jarema in 1956. Crowner uses documentation from the period as a pattern to make new curtains, reinventing elements of color and form. The work is both an homage to this rarely known artist, but also a form of historical restoration project, combined with her own artistic interpretation.
Sarah Crowner (1974) was born in Philadelphia and is based in Brooklyn. In 2010 she participated in the Whitney Biennial curated by Francesco Bonami and Gary Carrion-Murayari. She has participated in exhibitions at White Columns, New York Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, curated by Anthony Huberman, which traveled to ICA, London; Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit; de Appel, Amsterdam; Culturgest, Lisbon (2010), DAAD Galerie, Berlin (2008). Crowner designed the scenography for a revival of Robert Ashley’s Perfect Lives, which travels to Marfa, Texas and then on to venues in Europe. Upcoming exhibitions include a survey of some emerging tendencies in abstract painting at Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.
