January 5, 2024

Sarah Crowner: Around Orange at Pulitzer Arts Foundation, through February 4, 2024 

“A bold red, orange, blue, and black abstract painting installation nearly as long as a tennis court, glazed red terracotta tiles, and a pale birchwood floor structure are among the building blocks of a major three-part commission project by the artist Sarah Crowner (b. 1974) that will transform the ground level of the Pulitzer Arts Foundation this fall. On view September 8, 2023, through February 4, 2024, Sarah Crowner: Around Orange is organized by Stephanie Weissberg, Curator, Pulitzer Arts Foundation. 

As specially commissioned by the Pulitzer, the three-part installation represents an intergenerational visual dialogue between Crowner–an artist whose buoyant abstractions engage the history of art–and the late Ellsworth Kelly (1923–2015)–painter, sculptor, and printmaker–whose wall sculpture Blue Black (2000) hangs permanently in the main gallery of the Pulitzer and has become an emblem of the museum.” — Pulitzer Arts Foundation 

Sarah Crowner. Untitled (Around Orange), 2023. Acrylic on canvas, sewn 72 x 144 inches (182.88 X 365.76 cm) © Sarah Crowner; Courtesy of the artist, Luhring Augustine, New York, and Galerie Nordenhake, Berlin, Mexico City and Stockholm. Photo by Charles Benton.
Sarah Crowner. Untitled (Around Orange), 2023. Acrylic on canvas, sewn 72 x 120 inches (182.88 X 304.8 cm) © Sarah Crowner; Courtesy of the artist, Luhring Augustine, New York, and Galerie Nordenhake, Berlin, Mexico City and Stockholm. Photo by Charles Benton.
Sarah Crowner. Untitled (Around Orange), 2023. Acrylic on canvas, sewn 72 x 144 inches (182.88 X 365.76 cm) © Sarah Crowner; Courtesy of the artist, Luhring Augustine, New York, and Galerie Nordenhake, Berlin, Mexico City and Stockholm. Photo by Charles Benton.
Sarah Crowner. Untitled (Around Orange), 2023. Acrylic on canvas, sewn 72 x 72 inches (182.9 x 182.9 cm) © Sarah Crowner; Courtesy of the artist, Luhring Augustine, New York, and Galerie Nordenhake, Berlin, Mexico City and Stockholm. Photo: Farzad Owrang.
Sarah Crowner. Untitled (Around Orange), 2023. Acrylic on canvas, sewn 72 x 48 inches (182.9 x 121.9 cm) © Sarah Crowner; Courtesy of the artist, Luhring Augustine, New York, and Galerie Nordenhake, Berlin, Mexico City and Stockholm. Photo: Farzad Owrang.

“Through subtle placement and the strategic selection of color and tactility of material, Sarah illuminates core elements of the Pulitzer’s identity. Her choices derive from careful research into the Pulitzer’s own architecture, designed by Tadao Ando, and to Ellsworth Kelly’s Blue Black,” notes Pulitzer Executive Director Cara Starke. 

Starke continues, “The Pulitzer has a tradition of commissioning works of art and presenting exhibitions responding to the museum’s architecture and collection. In 2017, Blue Black was the inspiration for an exhibition of the same title organized by the artist Glenn Ligon.”

“Around Orange is both refined and exuberant,” suggests Weissberg. “Sarah draws attention to the nuanced decisions that Ellsworth Kelly made in responding to Tadao Ando’s interior. She also retains evidence of her own production process by leaving visible the stitching of sections of canvas or the color variations between tiles.”

Title image: Installation view of Sarah Crowner: Around Orange at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, Sep 8, 2023–Feb 4, 2024. Photograph by Alise O’Brien Photography, © Pulitzer Arts Foundation and Alise O’Brien Photography.

Images courtesy Pulitzer Arts Foundation.