Background

Sara Cwynar was born in 1985, in Vancouver, Canada. She has a twin sister, Kari Cwynar, a curator.

Education

In 2006, Sara attended the University of British Columbia, where she studied English Literature. Later, she attended York University in Toronto and earned a Bachelor of Design degree there in 2010. Then, in 2016, Cwynar received a Master of Fine Arts degree in Photography from Yale University.

Career

During her career, Sara took part in many solo exhibitions, including "Everything in the Studio Destroyed", Foam Photography Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (2013); "Flat Death", Cooper Cole, Toronto, Ontario (2013); "Soft Film", MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt, Germany (2017); "Tracy", Oakville Galleries, Oakville, Ontario, Canada (2018); "Sara Cwynar", The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, Connecticut (2019); "Image Model Muse", Milwaukee Museum of Art, Wisconsin (2019), among others.

Selected group exhibitions she took part in include "Under Construction – New Positions in American Photography", Pioneer Works, Brooklyn, New York City (2015); "L’Image Volée", Fondazione Prada, Milan, Italy (2016); "Hard to Picture: A Tribute to Ad Reinhardt", Mudam, Luxembourg (2017); "Subjektiv", Malmö Konsthall, Sweden (2017); "You Are Looking at Something That Never Occurred", Zabludowicz Collection, London, United Kingdom (2017); 33rd Bienal de São Paulo, Brazil (2018); "Mademoiselle", Centre Régional d’Art Contemporain d’Occitane, Sète, France (2018); "MAST Foundation for Photography Grant on Industry and Work", Mast Foundation, Bologna, Italy (2018), and others.

Cwynar designed the cover art for a 2013 album by the band Washed Out, using a combination of photography, illustration and Photoshop. Also, she has published two books - "Kitsch Encyclopedia: A Survey of Universal Knowledge" (2014) and "Pictures of Pictures" (2014). Moreover, Sara served as a freelance graphic designer for the New York Times.

Currently, the artist lives and works in Brooklyn, New York City.

Achievements

• Sara Cwynar is a well-known contemporary artist, who works in photography, installation and book-making. Her work involves a constant archiving and representation of collected visual materials.
  
  Among her key works are sculptural constructions, that are photographed, printed, tiled and re-photographed; images, taken from darkroom manuals, that are deconstructed, using a scanner; and stock photographs, that are collaged by hand and then re-photographed.
  
  Sara is a recipient of numerous awards, including the Dean’s Prize for Excellence (2008-2009), Kondor Fine Arts Award (2009), Art Director’s Club Young Guns Award (2011), Bâloise Prize (2016) and others.
  
  Cwynar’s works are kept in permanent collections of Guggenheim Museum, New York; MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; Minneapolis Institute of Art; Dallas Museum of Art; Milwaukee Art Museum; Fondazione Prada, Milan; Kadist Art Foundation, San Francisco; Zabludowicz Collection, London; Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City; and FOAM Photography Museum, Amsterdam.

Works

More photos

• artwork

  • CMYK Print Test Panel

  • Bellows - Clues to the Future (Darkroom Manual)

  • Man from Contact Sheet (Darkroom Manuals)

  • Lens (Darkroom Manuals)

  • Metals and Tanks (Darkroom Manuals)

  • Woman 5 (Cards)

  • Woman 4 (Cards)

  • Girl from Contact Sheet (Darkroom Manual)

  • Lighting Test Woman (Darkroom Manual)

  • Total Exposure Control (Darkroom Manuals)

  • Girl from Contact Sheet 2 (Darkroom Manuals)

  • Men in Suits (Darkroom Manuals)

  • Gold - NYT April 22, 1979 (Alphabet Stickers)

  • Vases (Encyclopedia Pictures)

  • Woman 3 (Cards)

  • Woman 2 (Cards)

  • Print Test Panel (Darkroom Manuals)

  • Doric Columns (Darkroom Manual)

  • Lib of Photography (Darkroom Manual)

  • Woman 1 (Cards)

  • Tracy (Pantyhose)

  • 72 Pictures of Modern Paintings

  • 432 Photographs of Nefertiti

  • Corinthian Column (Plastic Cups)

  • Cover Girl (stills)

  • Red Rose

  • Women

  • A Rococo Base

  • Ultra Cosmetics (Nail Polish Forty Fabulous Shades)

• book

  • Kitsch Encyclopedia

    ("Kitsch Encyclopedia" is a book project, that brings toge...)

    2014

Views

In her oeuvre, Sara applies such art media, as photography, collage, book-making and installation, by mean of which she explores the nature of photographic images and the power and limitations of the medium itself. Through the use of saved personal photographs and found images from both printed resources and the internet, Cwynar’s work communicates not only about the final image of a photograph, but also about the process of image making. Her works highlight how the once familiar becomes foreign, how the fetishized object loses its luster and how glamour fades.

Cwynar's practice exists at the juncture of old and new, analog and digital, nostalgia and futurism. She creates assemblages from found objects and pictures and then she photographs the assemblages and reproduces the images as c-prints.

Although Photoshop plays a role in the final work, nearly every stage of Cwynar’s process takes place in pre-production. The artist’s still-life images are highly manipulated, while maintaining references to reality, foregrounding the artist’s interest in photography’s power to deceive.

The major influences on Sara's artistic production include the works of fiction and the theoretical texts of Jean Baudrillard, Roland Barthes, Milan Kundera, Don Delillo and Walter Benjamin.

Quotations: "I have been trying to understand why old objects continue to resonate through time, how we place our aspirations and memories and feelings in objects and why these things might matter to on some fundamental level. For example, the idea, that objects need us just as much as we need them, that we give them purpose and use value and character in the world."

Connections

Sister:

Kari Cwynar