UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The HUB-Robeson Galleries is unveiling Sticky Mirror, an exhibition of paintings by Sarah Sutton. It will be displayed in Art Alley from Feb. 3 to May 8.
Sutton is an artist based in the Rochester, New York, area who is interested in visual perception and speculative futures. Her paintings in monochromatic oil imagine in-between spaces, scalar fluidity and "psychic" spaces — a term artists use to describe places where the private and public realm collapse. Through her work, Sutton seeks to show how short-term comforts and long-term consequences collide, as well as how the boundaries between history and interspecies dissolve only to reappear unexpectedly.
“The process is almost like a thought problem that starts with the question ‘What would it look like if … ?’” Sutton said. “Most of the time, the question centers on combining spaces or moments that aren’t meant to go together — letting them collude, collide and clash and then looking for pattern, resonance and schematic visual structures that emerge as I paint.”
Sutton grew up in a small town that rested over flooded anthracite coal mines. She later moved to a suburb of Cleveland located ten miles from the Perry Nuclear Plant where the cooling towers overtook the landscape. This visual represented a lurking environmental threat that would come to impact her paintings and ideas.
Sutton explained that she organizes humanity in her visual spaces like rhizomatic mycelium. Things that rarely go together connect to build symbiotic relationships. These relationships span time and place with figures that, instead of being foregrounded to solidify one small part, enmesh and entangle in Sutton’s web-like spaces.
The title of Sutton’s exhibition comes from philosopher and ecologist Timothy Morton, specifically his book “Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World.” In the book, “sticky mirrors” alludes to the viscous relationship between humans and objects, as well as environmental degradation and its “stickiness” to our bodies. Sutton’s hope for her paintings is that they “stick” or resonate with the viewer.
Sutton’s paintings have been shown in Europe and across the United States. Most recently, she exhibited at Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center in Buffalo, New York. She attended the Millay Colony artist residency, Santa Fe Art Institute residency and Yaddo. Her work was also featured in the 2021 Northeast Edition of New American Paintings.
Classes, student organizations and University offices are encouraged to visit the HUB-Robeson Galleries, a unit of Student Affairs. Inquiries can be directed to Galleries@psu.edu. For more information on this and other exhibitions, contact the HUB-Robeson Galleries at 814-865-2563 or visit their website. Keep up to date with the HUB-Robeson Galleries by signing up for their Listserv or follow them on Instagram @hubrobesongalleries.