Sarah Faux (b. 1986 Boston, MA, USA) received her MFA in Painting from Yale University in 2015. She gained a joint BA and BFA from Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design in 2009. Faux lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
Faux is a painter whose somatic work lies at the threshold of figuration and abstraction. Her paintings embrace unabashed sensuality, autonomy and pleasure. Faux's fluid compositions teeter on the edge of reality, revealing how much of our emotional and sensory lives take place beneath the surface.
Initially, her works often appear abstract. Overlapping volumes of luminous color are seductively tied together by quick, writhing line drawings. In disorientating configurations, Faux mirrors and inverts bodily forms in close crops. Within her pools of luscious paint, viewers slowly discern moments of clarity - a resting hand, a knowing eye. As Faux extends the period between perception and recognition, she invites curious exploration: 'it's like your eye is touching the canvas, rearranging fragments.'[1]
Organized from a first-person perspective, Faux's paintings build on an earlier feminist approach, that of painters Joan Semmel and Luchita Hurtado. This viewpoint creates an out-of-body experience for the viewer, who viscerally participates in their creation. Faux states: 'I can show feminized bodies in greater complexity, not exclusively as products of gender norms. My paintings embody all kinds of feelings: enjoyment in objectification, full-on hedonism, introverted depression, connectedness or alienation from the body…'[2] Through her sensory explorations, Faux creates an erotic abstract world.
Sarah Faux's solo exhibitions include Sweetbitter, Hales New York, NY USA; Whatever I see I swallow at M+B, Los Angeles, CA, USA (2021); Perfect for Her at Capsule Shanghai, China (2020); 11am Mirror Hole at Cuevas Tilleard Gallery, New York, NY, USA (2018); Seether at Thierry Goldberg Gallery, New York, NY, USA (2017) and Gemini, Stems Gallery, Brussels, Belgium (2016). She has been exhibited in many group shows, including Lyles & King, New York, NY, USA (2022); Loyal Gallery, Stockholm, Sweden (2020); Thomas Erben Gallery, New York, NY, USA (2019); Nevven Gallery, Göteberg, Sweden (2018); Fredericks and Freiser, New York, NY, USA (2016) and Edward Thorp Gallery, New York, NY, USA (2015). Faux has been the recipient of many residencies and grants, including a Keyholder Fellowship at the Lower East Side Printshop, New York, NY, USA (2018-19), artist residencies at Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, NY, USA (2017, 2012) and the Yale School of Art's Gloucester Painting Prize, Gloucester, MA, USA (2014). Faux's paintings have been written about in Cultured Magazine, Surface Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Modern Painters, Hyperallergic, i-D Vice and Artsy, among others.
[1] Sarah Faux, Artist Statement, 2022
[2] Faux, S. Reconstructing feminine bodies with internal logic, Artshard, January 2021