SARAH BUCKNER

Sarah Buckner’s image world is inspired by multiple sources: real-life encounters, books, films and imagination. She has developed an intuitive and fluid approach that transforms these impressions through her material practice. Her works distil narratives into images full of mystery, their atmospheric scenes resonating with emotional potency—the exact nature of which remains elusive, even to the artist, she says.

As Meret Held has written: ‘Between the concrete and the non-concrete, between the said and unsaid, she forms pictorial worlds that come very close to that of the dream. Like the dream, Sarah Buckner’s paintings are determined by a mixture of (past) experienced, (present) acting and (forward-looking) premonition. We are taken from the real space into the dream world by certain, peculiarly present picture elements, but especially by the materiality of the paintings themselves, the oil paint, which carries the trace of painting in itself and with it the liveliness of the painter herself.’

In 2020, Sarah Buckner was awarded the Residence NRW+ grant, and at the conclusion of the residency period presented her work in the solo exhibition Head over Heels at the Westfälischer Kunstverein in Münster in 2021.

In 2021, Buckner’s work was included in Esther Schipper’s group exhibition L’Invitation au voyage. Buckner’s work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions across Europe and the US. Among her participations in institutional exhibitions are: Salon des Amateurs, Tramps, London (2018), Lia Pasqualino Noto / Casa Studio, Manifesta 12, Palermo (2018); 1001 Bild, Villa de Bank, Enschede (2018), Eggy and Seedy, Munchies, London (2017), Petto, L’Ascensore, Palermo (2015), Beyond the Stage, Canongate Venture Edinburgh (2013).

Courtesy Esther Schipper