Sara Eichner, New Paintings and Prints

Sara Eichner:  New Paintings and Prints

April 14 – May 27, 2011

Opening Reception:  Thursday, April 14, 2011, 5 – 7 PM

 

Sears-Peyton Gallery is pleased to announce New Paintings and Prints, the third solo exhibition of New York artist Sara Eichner. These paintings and etchings represent Eichner’s continuing exploration of space and perspective.

 

Eichner’s principled approach to merging abstraction and structure creates planes that feel both solid and penetrable. Known for her precisely rendered paintings of architectural planes, Eichner draws inspiration from the patterns, grids, and textures she encounters when moving through her urban environment. She uses these patterns as starting points for experimentation with systems of spatial illusion.

 

Since her last exhibition at the gallery, in 2008, Eichner has completed a year-long residency at the Lower East Side Printshop, where she focused on Intaglio. She used this year to experiment with and exploit the character of line, using the etching process to record the subtle variations and imperfections of hand-drawing in contrast with the structure of her grids. She then introduced line to her paintings in a new way, blurring the boundary between drawing and painting by actually painting with very thin lines. Using line as the primary building block of her paint-drawn patterns, she finds space and texture, air, solidity, and movement. Sometimes the lines are so tightly packed in her receding planes, they appear to merge--and a new color is created. Sometimes the lines catch light and create a sheen reminiscent of burnished metal.

 

Each of Sara Eichner’s paintings has its own personality and speaks a minimal yet formal vocabulary. The group in this exhibit displays Eichner’s characteristic rigor and labor intensity, as well as new buoyancy. Each painting has a playfulness which perhaps comes from the artist’s realization that in her hands minimal tools and small gestures can have large effects.