The Sea, the Sky, a Window

A Project by Sarah Crowner

The Sea, the Sky, a Window
A Project by Sarah Crowner
Closing February 17, 2024

The Hill Art Foundation is pleased to present The Sea, the Sky, a Window, a project by Sarah Crowner opening September 22, 2023. The exhibition will place site-specific works by Crowner in dialogue with sculptures and paintings from the Hill Collection, as well as key loaned works.

The centerpiece of the exhibition will be three site-specific paintings created by Crowner in direct response to sculptures by Cy Twombly, an artist whose sculptural output consisted of intimate, corporeally scaled works. The Twombly/Crowner couplings modulate between spectator and subject, foreground and background, addressing each other across medium and time. In conversation with Levi Prombaum for the accompanying catalogue, Crowner elaborates: “These blue monochromes might be staged as backdrops, but they are more than backgrounds. They are paintings that replace windows, and that act as windows. What if we think about a sculpture looking at one, or looking through one, onto the city?”

Windows as architectural elements, framing devices, and portals are key to the project. Crowner explains: ​​“I’ve been thinking about the window not only as a metaphor for painting, like that classic Renaissance view of the painting as a window onto the world. Paintings and windows are also a kind of staging ground. Through them, we learn so much about the world. We pay attention to what’s around it, to what’s through it… We negotiate presence, tension, and embodiment.”

​​Crowner’s dialogues with Twombly open outward in a polyvocal, intergenerational exchange across two and three dimensions—a dynamic that is deepened by the inclusion of a range of works in the Hill Collection by other artists, including Beatrice Caracciolo, Spencer Finch, Louise Giovanelli, Jennie C. Jones, Claude LaLanne, and Henri Matisse.

Crowner’s site-specific piece, Platform (Stretched Pentagons), makes use of a distinct shape known as the 15th monohedral convex pentagonal type, so named because its unique combination of side lengths and angles make it one of fifteen variations of the pentagon shape that can be arranged to tile a flat plane. Inspired by these tessellated forms, Hollander reads the tile arrangement as a notational script to create choreographed patterns that unfold in quintuple time. The piece, Pentagon Dance, composed of 5 dancers, will use intricate footwork to present the geometric rules guiding this pentagonal shape that will continue to resonate up through the dancer’ torsos, limbs and hands.

Dancers: Eloise Deluca, Marielis Garcia, Miguel Angel Guzman, Lauren Shoemaker, Vinicius Silva

Eloise DeLuca received her BA in dance from California State University of Long Beach and has worked as a performance artist in New York for the last twelve years. She has movement directed for Solange Knowles at the Solomon R. Guggenheim and toured with Devonté Hynes of Blood Orange. She performed and acted as dance captain for the First National Tour of Fiddler on the Roof, choreographed by Hofesh Shechter. She is currently attending California Institute of the Arts for an MFA in Choreography.

Marielis Garcia is a Dominican American dance artist who has performed and toured with Brian Brooks, Helen Simoneau, Peter Kyle Dance, iKapa, and Stefanie Batten Bland, among others. She received her MFA in Digital and Interdisciplinary Art Practice from City College of New York. Garcia is an artistic advisor for Judson Memorial Church Arts, a contributor for the Gibney Journal, and has done curatorial work with STUFFED Arts and associate special programs curator for the MoMA in the Judson Dance Theater: ‘The Work is Never Done’. Marielis’ work has been presented both nationally and internationally. She has taught dance, choreographic practices and interdisciplinary digital practices at Rutgers University, North Carolina School of the Arts, Appalachian State University, and Guttman College among others. She was recently named Ballet Hispánico’s, Instituto Coreográfico Resident and was an Alvin Ailey New Directions Choreography Lab Grant recipient. Marielis was the Dance Artist in Residence within The School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies at the University of Maryland and is now Assistant Professor of Dance at University of North Carolina Greensboro.

Miguel Angel Guzmán is a dancer and actor originally from Mexico and is currently based in New York City. He has performed in Montréal, Paris, Vienna, Stockholm, Dublin, London and Tel Aviv, among others. Miguel’s work as a performer exists within the worlds of dance, film, theatre and music. He has worked alongside musicians Amanda Palmer, Sharon Van Etten and Sxip Shirey; and he recently wrapped a short film by Turkish director Azmi Mert Erdem. Miguel continues to collaborate with dance and performance artists Madeline Hollander, Ligia Lewis, Coco Karol, Pope L, Simone Forti and Deborah Hay. This coming Spring, Miguel will be seen in Alexandra Pirici’s “Attune” commissioned by the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin.

Lauren Shoemaker is an independent dance artist and teacher with a B.F.A. from Southern Methodist University. Previously with the Martha Graham Dance company and Graham 2, Lauren has worked with Madeline Hollander since 2015. It is always an honor and pleasure to be a part of Madeline’s creative process and share space with such incredible artists.

Vinícius Silva is Brazilian dancer and artist. Vinícius joined L.A. Dance Project in 2019. Since joining, he has had the opportunity to perform in Paris at Théâtre du Châtelet, Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, and La Seine Musicale, in New York City at The Joyce Theater, Nuits de Fourvière in Lyon, and at the grand opening of the Louvre Abu Dhabi UAE. While in the company Vinícius has danced principal roles in Benjamin Millepied’s “I Fall, I Flow, I Melt”, “Hearts and Arrows” and “Be Here Now”. In the company he has performed works by Bella Lewinsky, Jamar Roberts, Salia Sanou, Bobbi Jene Smith and Or Schraiber. He also worked with artists Dimitri Chamblas, Spenser Theberge, Kim Gordon, and Tino Sehgal. He is featured in Doug Aitken’s “Flag and Debris” that was screened at La Biennale di Venezia, in 2021. Vinícius Silva also had the honor to perform at Palais d’Elysées, in Paris, as a guest of Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron, for “Mardis de l’elysée”. Vinícius was a part of several projects with Madeline Hollander – “5 Live Calibrations” and “Elastic Ballet” that premiered in Paris, “Devotion” for Qatar Creates and also performed at  Neutra VDL.

Wardrobe by A–Company

Initially trained as a ballet dancer, Madeline Hollander (b. 1986, Los Angeles) studied cultural anthropology and visual arts at Barnard College (BA) and Bard College (MFA), New York. Solo exhibitions of her work have been mounted at the Whitney Museum of American Art (2021); the University of Texas at Austin, Visual Arts Center (2020); Bortolami Gallery, New York (2020); The Artist’s Institute, New York (2018). Her work has been exhibited at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, (2023); Brandhorst Museum, Munich, Germany (2022); Performa Biennial, New York (2021); The Aldrich Museum, Connecticut (2020); the Whitney Biennial curated by Rujeko Hockley and Jane Panetta (2019), Helsinki Contemporary, Finland (2019), the Work Marathon Festival at the Serpentine Galleries in London (2018), and Centre Pompidou Metz, France (2019). As a choreographer, Hollander’s pieces have been performed at the Joyce, New York; The Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Paris, and Louvre Abu Dhabi with the Los Angeles Dance Project, and she has collaborated with Jordan Peele on his feature film Us (2019) and Urs Fisher’s immersive installation PLAY at Gagosian, New York (2019) and Jeffrey Deitch, Los Angeles, CA (2019).