Bold abstraction and intense color are signatures of the New York-based painter Sarah Crowner (b. 1974), who brings these elements to the Pulitzer this fall. In three new site-specific artworks, Crowner pays homage to the architecture of the Pulitzer’s Tadao Ando building and the vision of Ellsworth Kelly, whose monumental wall sculpture, Blue Black, is on permanent view in the Pulitzer’s main gallery.
Crowner will present a seventy-five-foot-long painting, sewn together from cut sections of canvas in the main gallery of the museum. The scale of the painting responds to the museum’s architecture, wrapping around two of the gallery’s walls, while the height is the same as the six-foot width of the nearby Blue Black. The painting will be complemented by a red-orange glazed terracotta mural of the same height in the museum’s entrance courtyard.
In the museum’s entrance gallery, Crowner is producing a birch wood platform alongside a focused selection of early works by Kelly. Museum visitors are invited to move upon the platform, which will curve through the space, taking rounded forms in Kelly’s artworks as inspiration. The installation will transform the physical character of the gallery while the platform acts as a stage for experiencing Kelly’s work.
Sarah Crowner’s work is represented in major institutional collections across the world and has been exhibited widely, most recently as part of the 57th Edition of the Carnegie International at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; MASS MOCA, North Adams, Massachusetts; The Chinati Foundation, Marfa, Texas; Museo Amparo, Puebla, Mexico, and Lina Bo Bardi’s Casa de Vidro, São Paolo, Brazil.
