Sarah Cain: Day after day on this beautiful stage | Apr 1 – Aug 27, 2023

Seattle, WA (January 30, 2023)— The Henry is pleased to announce Sarah Cain: Day after day on this beautiful stage, a newly-commissioned exhibition by the Los Angeles-based artist. Well known for her exuberant abstractions, Cain's (b. 1979, Albany, NY) practice often extends beyond the canvas into installations, site-specific painting, stained glass, and furniture. Her work draws from sources as disparate as Abstract Expressionism, graffiti, and pop music, and incorporates materials as diverse as fabric, sand, feathers, jewelry, crystals, and ribbons. At the Henry, the artist will create an immersive architectural intervention in dialogue with the double-height architecture of the museum’s East Gallery.

Cain’s painting, which she describes as “muscular, mostly gestural,” embraces a strategically intuitive power that both undermines and expands our expectations of what has been historically considered “serious” abstract painting. Her color-soaked palette mixes with a wide range of found objects that the artist adds to her compositions. In turn, these objects complement her titles, which shift in reference from the sweet and mystical, created out of magic from under a rock (2017), to the erotic, Peacocking (2019), to the political, Keep it Safe and Legal (2018). Cain redefines abstraction in feminist terms as an architecture for transformative, embodied, emotive experience. In this regard, her work has an explicit politics that emphatically insists on the value of feminine, queer, and other “othered” aesthetics, intentionally dismantling male-dominated art historical traditions.

At the beginning of her career, Cain made dozens of site-specific paintings in abandoned buildings. By nature, these were ephemeral works. As her practice evolved, she has continued to create massive site-specific works and preserved the impulse to treat painting seriously, but not preciously. More recently, her desire to create and reveal space has found an outlet in the creation of elaborate works in stained glass—an element that will be included in the Henry installation in addition to floor-to-floor wall paintings and touchable furniture. Often referencing lyrics from popular or particularly resonant songs, Cain has chosen the title Day after day on this beautiful stage, a line from the 1998 song We Are Real by the Silver Jews, for her exhibition at the Henry.

Sarah Cain earned her BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and her MFA in studio art from the University of California, Berkeley. In 2006, Cain attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Cain has had solo exhibitions at the Tang Teaching Museum, Saratoga Springs, NY; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, La Jolla, CA; Los Angeles Nomadic Division, Los Angeles, CA; and the San Francisco Art Commission, San Francisco, CA. Additionally, Cain has participated in numerous groups exhibitions, including those at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, Ca; Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH; Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, TX; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; among others. Cain’s work is held in numerous public and private collections, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Perez Art Museum Miami; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; UBS Art Collection; and the Zabludowicz Collection, London. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, Vogue, Town & Country, Los Angeles Times Artforum Architectural Digest, and Art in America.

Sarah Cain: Day after day on this beautiful stage is organized by Shamim M. Momin, Director of Curatorial Affairs.