Sarah Cain pushes the boundaries of what painting can be, literally extending beyond the canvas onto gallery floors and walls and adopting unexpected materials like sequined backpacks and an easy chair. Her current solo show at Broadway in Tribeca features traditional, framed 2-D artworks but also this installation, a combination of expressionist and hard-edge painting that invites the audience to step in and feel the color. (On view through Oct 16th).
Using unconventional painting materials like the jewelry chains crisscrossing this canvas, LA-based artist Sarah Cain aims to prompt memories and evoke emotions in her viewers. Actually titled ‘Emotions,’ this painting simultaneously suggests a spill of paint, hanging fabric and fairground flags, blurring abstraction and representation and taking the mind several places at once. (On view in Lehmann Maupin Gallery’s summer group show ‘cart, horse, cart’ in Chelsea through August 16th).
Art audiences love experiential art (witness long lines at every Yayoi Kusama walk-in sculpture, the Rain Room, etc), so it’s somewhat surprising how few painters offer to envelop viewers in their work. Sarah Cain is not one of the reticent artists, however. Her installation, Dark Matter, at Chelsea’s Galerie Lelong covers the gallery floor in bold patterns on lino, competing with but also complimenting vibrant canvases that employ beads, pinwheels, string and more to take the composition off the canvas. (Through Oct 15th).
Once, LA-based artist Sarah Cain created work primarily in abandoned buildings. In her current site-specific installation at Galerie Lelong, she pushes painting far beyond the edge of the canvas, creating an eye-catching sprawl of color and form at the back of the gallery. (In Chelsea through March 15th).
Sarah Cain, hypnic jerk, site-specific installation, 2014.
