Sara Stern '17 Opens Latest Solo Exhibition, 'STALL,' at Turley Gallery

Visual Arts alum and interdisciplinary artist Sara Stern '17 has her fifth solo exhibition, STALL, on display at Turley Gallery in Hudson, New York. Stern's mise en abyme installation transforms Turley Gallery's
interstitial space, The Light Well, into a horse stall with a toy theater showing a video of horseshoe crabs spawning. STALL runs from July 19 to September 7, 2025.

The exhibition's name is a play on words, referring both to the diorama-esque horse stall setting Stern created and the act of purposeful delay. The diorama, set in straw, includes red theater curtains which frame a toy theater showing the horseshoe crab video. In the image-within-an-image, the audience encounters the shell of a horseshoe crab watching the the spawning video from atop a bale of straw.

"This is a show as old as the dinosaurs," Stern wrote in the press release. "The horseshoe crab, often referred to as a 'living fossil,' is among the oldest species on Earth. By stalling, the horseshoe crab survived."

Turley Gallery's Light Well is a space designed for liminal installations. Windows opening into gallery space create a unique opportunity for mise en abyme installations. Turley Gallery features work by established and emerging artists pushing the boundaries of their respective mediums.

Sara Stern is an interdisciplinary artist based in New York City. Her recent projects prod varied histories of landscape and urban development with speculative fiction. She works between and across multimedia performance, moving image installation, sculpture, architectural intervention, and animation.

Stern has exhibited and screened her work in the US and internationally, at venues including SculptureCenter, Essex Flowers, Ortega y Gasset Projects, Anthology Film Archives, the Museum of the Moving Image, and The Jewish Museum in New York City, as well as Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore. Stern received a BA in Visual and Environmental Studies from Harvard College and an MFA in Visual Arts from Columbia University. She is the recipient of a Rema Hort Mann Emerging Artist Grant, the Fountainhead Fellowship in the Department of Sculpture + Extended Media at Virginia Commonwealth University, and several residencies at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA. In recent years, Stern has participated in The Watermill Center Artist Residency Program, the Fire Island Artist Residency, the Art & Law Program, the Object Movement Residency at The Center at West Park, all in New York State, and the Artist Residency at the Carving Studio and Sculpture Center, in Rutland, Vermont.