PAULA CROWN F R E E Z I N G RA I N
“To think of time—of all that retrospection, To think of to-day, and the ages continued henceforward.” —Walt Whitman, To Think of Time A sheet of rain. It’s an odd expression for what we know better as fast and dense drops of water pouring from the sky. We all know rain does not fall in sheets. At the outer limits of a weather system, one will not find any hard, defined edges, nor any clearly demarcated beginning or end. And yet, the turn-of-phrase is an effective visual metaphor for the mirage that manifests before our eyes during a torrential storm. It’s an experience conjured for me when I see artist Paula Crown’s Freezing Rain installation, a shimmering, cascading dimensional sculpture composed of highly reflective, suspended stainless steel raindrops set in relationship to the surrounding architectural system of the Marlborough Gallery. Crown’s title, Freezing Rain, is itself a double entendre referring to the natural phenomenon of precipitation in its solid and icy form that at the same time references the act of grasping yet another natural phenomenon, the desirous impossibility of zooming in on that split second in time as an unavoidable, unseeable gravitational pull funnels water to earth. In proposing the aforementioned term, the “sheet” deploys as an apt metaphoric device when one discovers Crown’s computational process for the creation of this work. First Crown snapped a quick digital photograph of rain one stormy day itself a freezing of time set in a rectilinear form. Then a representational drawing rendered in ink and brush was made by hand from that picture on a sheet of paper. That analogue reproduction of a digital copy was then scanned, enlarged, and uploaded onto software that allows for the positional mapping of objects in space. Here at this stage in the process, the intangible suspension of time renders tangible. Crown transforms a gesture into a solid through the employment of technological devices, a common step in her multivalent markmaking practice that masterfully incorporates the language of technology into its conceptualist program. How can chance and purpose align? That is a question Crown asks us to ponder in the works on view in this exhibition. Drawing on a transcendentalist-pragmatist source as inspiration, Crown sites the three-tiered philosophy put forth by American semiotician Charles Sanders Pierce. Pierce said that chance, determination and purpose were the central organizing tenets of human existence. By extension, knowledge—in the logician’s terms—becomes thought translated into language. For Crown, technology is yet another tool for knowing, beyond language and yet employed today with similarly polarizing effects, co-opted for sometimes propagandistic and sometimes humanitarian applications. The technology of the super mirror stainless steel we find in Freezing Rain is itself a purposeful gesture, for this is the same anti-corrosive material grafted onto telescopic vehicles set off in outer space meant to withstand the harshest and most unpredictable of climates. Crown’s completed work expresses such dialogic peculiarities; it is hard and soft, durable and seemingly light, a coupling of supposed binaries that cast a real world against a fictive future one. Walk around Crown’s Freezing Rain sculpture and you quickly begin to see the fractured reflection of seeing oneself in its hundreds of unique parts. This is a coded space where we the viewers are implicated into its time and logic. A slippage in the phenomenological representation of a natural phenomenon mirrors the slippage between the binaries mentioned above, in turn exposing a moment of ephemerality that is an undercurrent of Crown’s oeuvre. This fleetingness is belied by the locked in or frozen topologies created by Crown’s chainmail sculptures mounted on the walls nearby. These moments of capture suggest that time is a dictator of human experience. Yet in their seriality, repetition, and difference Crown reveals that this logic is not the only answer. Like in Freezing Rain, these drawings in space remind us that the moment that something translates from mirage to manifestation, from concept to form, from chance to purpose, that is only the beginning of real knowing. —Tina Kukielski Executive Director, ART21
Freezing Rain, 2016, super mirror stainless steel and monofilament dimensions variable
Freezing Rain (detail), 2016, super mirror stainless steel and monofilament, dimensions variable
Anemos Series, 2016, stainless steel chain mesh
Charles Harlan, Roll Gate, 2014, steel, 112 x 60 x 15 in, 284.5 x 152.4 x 38.1 cm photo by Charles Benton, image courtesy of the artist and JTT, New York
Anemos Series, 2016, stainless steel chain mesh
PAULA CROWN 1959
Born in Marblehead, Massachusetts
1980
Earned an A.B. in Management Science from Duke University, Magna Cum Laude
2009
Crown is appointed to President Obama’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities
2012
Earned an MFA in painting and drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Burman, Sujata. “Fractal furniture: Holly Hunt collaborates with artist Paula Crown” Wallpaper*, October 16, 2015 “Dallas Contemporary announces installation by Chicago artist Paula Crown” Art Daily, October 3, 2014 De Causans, Delphine. “Paula Crown Shares Her Journey from Wall Street to the Art World” Haute Living, March 4, 2014 Drennen, Craig. “Paula Crown: As Above” Art Pulse, Winter 2015
The artist lives and works in Aspen, Colorado and Chicago, Illinois.
Duray, Dan. “Paula Crown on her Marlborough Show: ‘I’m Painting With the Tools of Technology” Art News, February 5, 2015
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
Frehsee, Nichole. “Paula Crown Leads Aspen’s Art Community” Aspen Peak, November 26, 2012
2016
Bearings Down, The Goss-Michael Foundation, Dallas, Texas
2015
THE SUBLIME AND THE CENTER: DIMENSIONS OF LANDSCAPE, Marlborough Gallery, New York, New York
Have a Ball, Miami Design District, Miami, Florida
Gardener-Smith, Brent. “Paula Crown’s artistic vision shared at Ideas Festival” Aspen Journalism, June 29, 2013
2014
TRANSPOSITION: Over Many Miles, Miami Design District, Miami, Florida
Granberry, Michael. “A Crowning Achievement: Goss-Michael Foundation makes its mark with Paula Crown” Dallas Morning News, April 8, 2016
WALL-SPACE: The Non-Architecture of the Studio Wall, EXPO Chicago, Chicago, Illinois
Green, Emma. “Her Big Idea: Paula Crown” The Atlantic, June 29, 2013
Inside My Head: A Contemporary Self Portrait, Dallas Contemporary, Dallas, Texas
2013
Phantasmagoria, Aspen Institute, Aspen, Colorado
Inside My Head: A Contemporary Self Portrait, Aspen Institute, Aspen, Colorado
Foumberg, Jason. “The artists who waste not want not” The Art Newspaper, December 4, 2014
Heymann, Marshall. “From Real Estate Finance to Abstract Art” Wall Street Journal, February 6, 2015 McVey, Kurt. “Paula Crown: Mount Analogue Squared” Whitehot Magazine, July 26, 2016 Munro, Cait. “Artnet Asks: Paula Crown” Artnet News, February 4, 2015 Pridmore, Jay. “Studio System” Wallpaper*, November 2014
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
Slenske, Michael. “Making Waves in Miami” Sotheby’s, December 2014
2016
Mount Analogue, curated by Neville Wakefield, Performance Ski, Aspen, Colorado
Thomas, Dana. “See Paula Crown’s Interactive Sculpture” Architectural Digest, April 30, 2015
For Freedoms, Jack Shainman Gallery, New York, New York
Vazquez, Neil. “Artist Paula Crown’s Outdoor Installation Transposition Ends After a Year in the Design District” Miami New Times, March 28, 2016
2014
Brain-Art Initiative, Beverly Art Center, Chicago, Illinois
Inside Space, curated by Anne Harris, Riverside Art Center, Riverside, IL
2012
Go To Pieces: Recent Graduates From SAIC, curated by Philip Vanderhyden, Monya Rowe Gallery, New York, NY
LITERATURE Azzarello, Nina. “Paula Crown sets Transposition installation within the Miami Design District” designboom, December 5, 2014 Binlot, Ann. “The New Crown Jewel of Miami” Forbes, December 17, 2014 Binlot, Ann. “Focus: Paula Crown” Whitewall, Winter 2014
Vazquez, Neil. “Paula Crown’s ‘Have A Ball’ in Design District is Whimsical Fun” Miami New Times, June 23, 2015 Zhong, Fan. “The Beach is Back” W Magazine, December 2014/January 2015 RELATED PUBLICATIONS Art in Unexpected Places: The Aspen Art Museum and Aspen Skiing Company Collaboration (2012). Foreword by Paula Crown, Jim Crown. Text by Heidi Zuckerman Jacobson, Mike Kaplan, Michael Miracle, Terry R. Myers, et al. Bloemink, Barbara. ELEMENT 47: The Art Collection, Marquand Books, Seattle, 2014. Crown, Paula. WALTER NIEDERMAYR: THE ASPEN SERIES, Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern, 2012.
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© 2016 Marlborough Gallery, Inc. ISBN 978-0-89797-489 Cover image:
Freezing Rain (detail), 2016, super mirror stainless steel and monofilament, dimensions variable
PAULA CROWN F R E E Z I N G RA I N
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