SARAH CAIN
You Aurora Borealis Me

Sara Meltzer Gallery is pleased to present YOU AURORA BOREALIS ME , Sarah Cain's first solo exhibition at the gallery. The exhibition is on view Saturday, April 4 through Saturday, May 2.

Describing the natural luminous aurora that occurs in the Northern Hemisphere, the exhibition title YOU AURORA BOREALIS ME speaks to the phenomenon between two people: magnetism, the force exerted, sensory experience and the surroundings that simultaneously bind and disconnect. Sarah Cain's practice is informed most immediately by her physical, emotional and psychic response to the space in which she is creating. She incorporates natural elements and found materials, moving fluidly between works on paper, paint - on and off the canvas, sculpture, and site-specific installation.

Cain's work can happen alarmingly fast in only a few hours or can evolve over years. Similarly, the scale of the work can shift drastically from piece to piece, ranging from a few inches to an entire room. Cain makes adept use of mixed media and collage, seamlessly integrating, sand, spray paint, chain link, scarves and crushed glass onto painted surfaces. This layering lends itself to constant visual discovery.

Finding solace in art that falls outside of the traditional canon, she employs modes stemming from talismanic practices, graffiti, and direct raw mark making from the visionary ecstatic traditions.   Her immediate and inventive practice moves between control and abandon, standing on a thin line between not enough and going too far. But perhaps the most palpable charge in Cain's work is her impulse to challenge the status of painting and employ abstraction as a mode of representation to expand on the limits of language.

Born in Albany, NY, Sarah Cain lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. She is a graduate of the San Francisco Art Institute (BFA, 2001) and the University of California, Berkeley (MFA, 2006). Cain's work was recently included in the 2008 California Biennial curated by Lauri Firstenberg, with site-specific works at the Orange County Museum of Art and an off-site project at Five Thirty Three Gallery in downtown Los Angeles. Cain's work has been exhibited in group exhibitions at Aspen Art Museum, Aspen, CO; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley, CA; 2006 Busan Biennial, Korea curated by Doryun Chong; Open Space, Vancouver, BC, Canada and galleries internationally. Cain is represented by Anthony Meier Fine Arts in San Francisco and Seiler+Mosseri Marlio Galerie, Zurich, Switzerland.

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