Sarah Crowner

Born 1974 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Lives and Works in Brooklyn, New York

Sarah Crowner creates her paintings by sewing together angular pieces of painted canvas. The geometric compositions evoke the style of Hard-Edge paintings of the 1950s and 1960s. However, the visible seams that result from Crowner’s process complicate pristine surfaces by evoking the tactile qualities of patchwork. With its associations of domestic labor, the act of sewing also confronts the high seriousness of abstract painting with the unpretentious tradition of craft.

The jagged black-and-white compositions on view in 2010 directly reference the work of British artist Bridget Riley, who became known in the early 1960s for her visually confounding Op Art paintings and sculpture—meticulous geometric abstractions that produced complex optical effects. Using images of Riley’s 1963 sculptural installation Continuum (now destroyed) as a sort of template, Crowner reconstructs a three-dimensional work as a series of two-dimensional objects on an intimate, human scale.


Read About the Artist

"Reviews: Sarah Crowner"
Modern Painters (June 2009)

"Art in Review; Sarah Crowner"
The New York Times (May 2009)

A sewn canvas of black, white and grey.
A sewn canvas of black, white and grey.

Sarah Crowner, Superficie Modulada 1956 [Part 1] , 2009. Gouache on sewn canvas, 58 × 36 in. (147.3 × 91.4 cm). Private collection; courtesy Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, New York

Artworks on wall.
Artworks on wall.

Installation view of 2010, the Whitney Biennial (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, February 25-May 30, 2010). Photograph by Sheldan C. Collins. Left to right: Gift, 2009 by Richard Aldrich; Untitled Fold XIII, 2009, Untitled Fold XIV, 2009 and Untitled Fold XII, 2009 by Tauba Auerbach; Untitled (Continuum 1963), 2009 by Sarah Crowner

On the Hour

A 30-second online art project:
Maya Man, A Realistic Day In My Life Living In New York City

Learn more about this project

Learn more at whitney.org/artport

On the Hour projects can contain motion and sound. To respect your accessibility settings autoplay is disabled.