Sara Cwynar in Foam

Foam is proud to present a large-scale solo exhibition by Sara Cwynar (b. 1985, Vancouver, CA), the seventh exhibition in the series Next Level. Sara Cwynar is a leading artist of her generation who seeks to make sense of our current visual culture through photography, essayistic video works, collages, installations and books. In her studio, she collects and documents images and objects to identify the ways that these everyday materials shape our lives as we consume them. In this way, she captures the prevailing ideals and ideologies of an era.Through photographs taken from encyclopedias, the internet and a myriad of catalogues, excerpts from literary essays by leading thinkers as well as witty captions she plucks straight from Instagram – Cwynar gives chapter and verse to the process of imaging that shapes how we perceive the world. A common thread in Cwynar's work is her ongoing research into the effects of consumerism and how it subconsciously shapes our beauty and lifestyle ideals and subsequently, our self-image. Much of her work specifically focuses on the female consumer: from the cultural phenomenon of the New Woman of the turn of the nineteenth century until now. The exhibition title, S/S 23, is the usual designation for the new fashion season – in this case 'Spring/Summer 2023'. It refers to the trends that come and go, that keep pushing us to buy new products and conform to new ideals.New work will premiere in her solo exhibition, in which she examines not only the products, but also the buildings with which we shape our living environment. Her work is like an index to the Zeitgeist, charting which ideals we strive for and which are lost. In addition, the existing video work Red Film(2018) will be shown, in which the artist hangs upside down and shares her research findings, while interrupting and being interrupted by a male narrator. Red Film uses the perfect red lipstick to reveal and critique what and why we buy, what this says about society's expectations, how our desire is constantly fed, and what value we ascribe to all these products we surround ourselves with.Like an anthropologist of our contemporary economy of endless choice, Sara Cwynar explores what the products, colours and images are with which we constantly shape our lives and identities and how they change over time. Through her work, she encourages the viewer to go beneath the surface of capitalism and modern visual culture to discover what is ‘real’. The outcome is a detailed examination of the mechanisms that guide and determine our perception, making her work as seductive as it is disturbing.