Sarah Crowner: Around Orange

Bold abstraction and intense color are signatures of the New York-based painter Sarah Crowner, who brings these elements to the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, beginning Sept. 8.

In three new site-specific artworks, Crowner pays homage to the architecture of the Pulitzer’s Tadao Ando-designed 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 75-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 nearby six-foot-wide 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 also 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.