Dimmitt Contemporary Art Austin is pleased to announce ARDENT FLAME, an exhibition of paintings by Palm Springs-based artist Sara Genn. An opening reception will be held on Saturday, April 6, 2024 from 5:00 - 7:00pm. The exhibition will be on view through April 30, 2024.
Genn’s ARDENT FLAME is a collection of small and mid-sized modular color field paintings inspired by the authenticity and intimacy of the freestanding Dimmitt Contemporary Art Austin gallery and is an extension of the artist’s My Heart is a Thousand Words series. These paintings seek to demonstrate the technical, material and aesthetic nuances of how color is perceived, preferred and organized; and in doing so, they grasp at the viewer’s individual longings and pleasures, as well as our interconnectivity and shared seeing.
Through her work, Genn references the principles of her Japanese maternal heritage and the aesthetic of wabi-sabi, which includes asymmetry, asperity (the roughness or irregularity of things), simplicity, austerity, and intimacy. These principles aim to evoke sensations of balance, rhythm, and a defiant softness, striving to create objects and experiences that are beautiful in their evocation of spiritual longing. It strives to offer simultaneously, a place of visual shelter and excitement; and to occupy space with objects that blur the signifiers of gender, craft and monuments. As much as these works seek to embody color field foundations and to straddle sensations of weightiness and weightlessness, they’re also concerned with tactile materiality, light and shadow casting, and surface illusions. The supersoft-flatness of poured and saturated, light-bouncing spaces and their edges are meticulously created freehand; no tape is used.
Sara Genn’s work has been featured on American billboards for Nissan Infiniti, The Toronto Arts Council, in film and television and in the New York Times, House Beautiful, Create!, House and Home, NYLON Japan, Town and Country, W, Domino, American Art Collector, New York Magazine, LONY, and Tatler, as well as in the Rizzoli publication New York Parties; Private Views and for the Faberge Big Egg Hunt. Her work resides in both private and public collections including New York Presbyterian Hospital and the Palm Springs Art Museum.
