SARAH STEVENSON | SPECTRUM
2026 | SARAH STEVENSON
SPECTRUM
MONTREAL
Jan 30 - March 21, 2026
Opening reception: Friday January 30, 2026, from 5pm-7pm
Sarah Stevenson, Horizon (detail), 2025, wire, fishing line, acrylic paint, 102 x 53 1/2 x 53 1/2 in. (259 x 136 x 136 cm)
Blouin Division Gallery is pleased to present Spectrum, an exhibition of recent works by artist Sarah Stevenson.
Floating slightly above the ground, Sarah Stevenson's sculptures initially appear to be ghostly forms haunting the exhibition space. Composed simply of metal wire (the horizontal lines) and cotton thread (the vertical lines), her sculptures immediately attract attention due to the tension they create between the recognizable and the mysterious. Containing allusions to the vegetal world, the animal world, and even cellular structure, the unique forms invented by Stevenson unfold like a three-dimensional drawing. Their slight oscillations in response to the slightest breeze contribute to the poetic atmosphere that develops between these forms suspended in space.
“I started this series last autumn, that time when everything is bursting with colour, the market is full of squashes and tomatoes and things but it’s also starting to get cold and winter is on the horizon. I was inspired to make the piece I am now calling Tournesol (the titles often come after the piece is finished) by the brilliant yellow leaves on the trees outside my studio window.
By chance I was reading a book called 'The World According to Colour,’ by James Fox, which is about how the meaning of different colours is invented and interpreted by different cultures. Its much more complex than this but one of the things I found most interesting was the idea that colour itself is an invented concept since the way we see it is a product of how our eyes react to light.
Which is to say that I got interested in making a piece in every colour on the basic colour wheel. By this time it was the dead of winter and almost all colour had disappeared from the outside world. I was really feeling the need of something exotic and flamboyant in my studio.
I used the same shape for all the pieces in the series, although it evolved along the way. At the beginning it was like an onion, or a bulb with a long stalk. By the time I got to Horizon it became a voluminous shape, more like a cloud. Horizon is the only piece not inspired by flora. As Fox points out in his book, in the distant past there were no truly blue objects that people could hold in their hands. The only things that appeared as blue were the sky and the sea.” - Sarah Stevenson
Sarah Stevenson is an artist working in the media of sculpture and drawing. Born in England, she grew up in various cities across Canada, received a BFA from the University of Victoria in 1984, and settled in Montreal in 1988. Stevenson's work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions in Canada and abroad, including the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Galleria d'Arte Moderna in Bologna and the Esker Foundation in Calgary.