Sara VanDerBeek

Sara VanDerBeek.JPG

Pink Nude II, 2017

Great Jones Alley

Sara VanDerBeek was born in Baltimore in 1976 and now lives and works in New York. 

Her photographs utilize a variety of formal strategies to explore issues of memory and the experience of time and space. VanDerBeek photographs her own geometric plaster sculptures and their shadows outdoors against a white background to exploit shifting angles of light. VanDerBeek then layers these images multiple times during the printing process. The final colors within the images are rendered by an amalgam of digital and chromogenic printing processes.

In her most recent exhibit, the artist presented new photographs that continue her inquiry into place, time and culture. VanDerBeek traveled to Paris, Rome and Naples where she explored archeological sites and museum collections of classical and neoclassical sculpture. During this period of research, she focused on ancient female figures as they exist within evolving visual culture. These works translate the museum tableaux and sense of scale, space and time VanDerBeek experienced while visiting these collections.

Interview (2009)

Solo exhibitions at

  • Baltimore Museum of Art

  • Hammer Museum, Los Angeles

  • Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

  • Fondazione Memmo, Rome

  • Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland

Group exhibitions at

  • Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston

  • Kunsthalle Berlin

  • Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

  • Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

  • Morgan Library and Museum, New York

  • Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

  • Museum of Modern Art, New York.