On view at The Contemporary Austin – Laguna Gloria

Inspired by organic forms found in nature, Sarah Crowner renders color, line, and pattern into unique abstractions that play with positive and negative space. She is best known for geometric paintings made from raw or acrylic-painted canvases that are then cut, re-stretched, collaged, and sewn back together into luminous, colorful compositions. In addition to the natural world, Crowner’s visual language references midcentury modernist abstraction, particularly in her installations and recent exploration of three-dimensional forms. In Garden Sculpture Blue and Garden Sculpture Grey—benches meant to be used as public seating—the pastel blue and gray tactile, bulbous forms allude to the abstract tree shapes in the architectural sketches of Paulo Mendes da Rocha, an iconic Brazilian architect known for his innovative, early modernist Bauhaus-style use of concrete. Crowner says that she was interested in “turning soft botanical forms … into the architect’s medium, concrete,” as well as in the “bird’s-eye view” of the shapes—flattening and then making them three-dimensional again.