Sarah Crowner

Sarah Crowner makes bright, energetic abstract paintings, often by sewing together pieces of painted canvas and cloth. Creating dynamic compositions of flat, colored triangles, arcs, and polygons, her blending of materials and textures is so deft that the viewer can only distinguish between painted plane and dyed fabric up close, undermining traditional distinctions between craft labor and fine art. Works such as her 2012 triptych Ciseaux Rideaux ("Scissor Curtains") uses a harlequin patterning that refers visually to the movement of curtains in a breeze, the act of cutting, passage down a staircase, and other visually vigorous movements. Crowner also makes sculptures of carved wood, monochromatically stained or painted, in waving or arching shapes similar to those found in her canvases.

Crowner has been showing her work since the late 1990s and has exhibited in Paris, Berlin, New York, Lisbon, and Amsterdam. She has been included in exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, the National Museum of Poland, and at the Whitney Biennial, among others. In 2011, she designed the sets for Robert Ashley’s opera Vida Perfectas, which travelled to the Irondale Center, Serpentine Gallery, and Marfa Ballroom.