SARAH KURZ

SAY SOMETHING LOVING

June 28 - July 15, 2019

Opening reception, Friday, June 28, 6 - 9pm

Gaa Gallery Provincetown

Gaa Gallery is delighted to present Say Something Loving, the gallery’s second solo exhibition with New York-based painter Sarah Kurz. The exhibition will be on view June 28 through July 15, 2019 at the gallery’s Provincetown location, 494 Commercial Street, Provincetown, MA. An opening reception with the artist will be held on Friday, June 28 from 6 to 9pm.

This exhibition showcases a series of new paintings initiated during Kurz’s 2018 Robert Rauschenberg Residency in Captiva Island, Florida. Taking inspiration from Todd Haynes’ 1995 film Safe, the artist examines constructed notions of safety and their inherent limitations. Say Something Loving reflects the duality of desire: the human yearning for security and the concurrent, innate vulnerabilities of love.

The paintings in Say Something Loving depict and implode tropes of security through nonlinear strategies: Kurz presents us with a hand and a rope; a weathered exit sign; a weary hook with peeling paint.  These works isolate seemingly ordinary subjects for a complex yield of deep psychological quality; the artist presents nostalgia alongside danger, functionality astride irrelevance, as she explores the elusive nature of real safety.

Kurz’s paintings are a series of carefully chosen moments, marked by formal qualities that include jumps in scale and synonymous light and color. The artist’s use of close-ups and compositional cropping and framing reflect a foundational interest in film.  Yet these paintings suggest interrupted narratives: they offer partial, fragmented studies that demand empathic considerations of the mind and body in space and time.  Kurz’s recent paintings are psychological and transcendent: Say Something Loving is a careful consideration of intellectual perceptions.

Sarah Kurz (b. 1981, Summit, NJ) received a BA from Columbia University and an MFA from Tyler School of Art. Solo exhibitions include Made for Love at Allegra LaViola Gallery, New York, NY, and Yellow Sea at Gaa Gallery, Provincetown, MA. Recent group exhibitions include: Three Voices, Lighthouse Gallery, New York, NY; Against Forgetting I & II, Gaa Gallery, Provincetown and Wellfleet, MA; Domestic, Deanna Evans Gallery, New York, NY; and Black Mirror, SPRING/BREAK Art Show, curated by Teriha Yaegashi, New York, among others. Her work has been featured in numerous publications, including Flash Art, The New York Times, Vanity Fair, Artnet, and Art Critical. Kurz is the recipient of the Robert Rauschenberg Residency, the Anderson Ranch Residency and the Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant from the Atlantic Center for the Arts.