Stephen Friedman Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition of new paintings by British artist Sarah Ball at Frieze New York 2021. This will be the first major presentation of the artist’s work since the gallery announced representation of Ball in November 2020.
The works on display are a continuation of the artist’s ongoing series of meticulously rendered portraits examining themes of gender and identity. This new body of paintings revisits some of the artist’s previous subjects by realising their portraits on a larger scale, thus allowing Ball to “open up” and explore the “physicality of painting” further. The artist references material such as newspaper cuttings, archival photographs and social media to inform her portraits. Demonstrating an acute sensitivity to the psyche of her subjects, Ball emphasises physical characteristics – which the artist refers to as a “mask” – that define how we outwardly portray ourselves to the world.
Frequently depicting people who celebrate self-expression and contest traditional binary norms, Ball highlights physiognomy, hairstyles, clothes, jewellery and make-up that reveal the idiosyncrasies of her anonymous, often unknowing sitters. Deep, pooling eyes pierce luminescent skin, while textures and patterns on garments are depicted with a strong sense of tactility. Set against flat planes of colour and confined within closely cropped compositions, the artist lends the people within her work a surreal, timeless quality by denying the viewer any form of narrative about their identity.
Sarah Ball was born in Yorkshire, UK in 1965. She currently lives and works in Cornwall, UK. Ball studied at Newport Art College in the early 1980s and completed an MFA at Bath Spa University in 2005. She has exhibited at The Royal Academy of Arts, London; Victoria Miro, London; Somerset House, London; Half Gallery, New York; Victoria & Albert Museum, London and Anima Mundi, St Ives, Cornwall. Her first museum exhibition, ‘Unlikely Likeness’, took place at the Grace Museum in Abilene, Texas in the autumn of 2019. Ball’s works are included in the permanent collections of the Kistefos Museum, Norway; British Museum, London and Rachofsky Collection, Dallas. The artist will have her first solo exhibition with Stephen Friedman Gallery, London in early 2022.