Sarah Sze

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Sarah Sze
Born1969 (age 54–55)
Boston, Massachusetts, US
Alma materYale University, BA 1991
School of Visual Arts, MFA 1997
Known forSculpture
SpouseSiddhartha Mukherjee
AwardsMacArthur Fellow
2003
US Representative for the Venice Biennale
2013
Websitesarahsze.com

Sarah Sze (/ˈziː/; born 1969) is an American artist and professor of visual arts at Columbia University.[1]Sze's work explores the role of technology, information, and memory with objects in contemporary life utilizing everyday materials.[2] Her work is often represents objects caught in suspension. Drawing from Modernist traditions, Sze's confronts the relationship between low-value mass-produced objects in high-value institutions, creating the sense that everyday life objects can be art.[3] She has exhibited internationally and her works are in the collections of several major museums.

Early life and education[edit]

Sze was born in Boston in 1969. Her father, Chia-Ming Sze, was an architect who moved to the United States from Shanghai at age four and her mother, Judy Mossman, was an Anglo-Scottish-Irish schoolteacher. Sze reports that as a child she would draw constantly.[4] She attended Milton Academy as a day student and graduated summa cum laude with a BA in Architecture and Painting from Yale University in 1991.[5][6]

Career[edit]

Sze's work has been featured in The Whitney Biennial (2000), the Carnegie International (1999) and several international biennials, including Berlin (1998), Guangzhou (2015), Liverpool (2008), Lyon (2009), São Paulo (2002), and Venice (1999, 2013, and 2015).[7]

Sze has created public artworks for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Walker Art Center, and the High Line in New York.[7]

Sze is a 2003 MacArthur Fellow and was granted a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Biennial Competition Award in 1999.[8]

Work[edit]

In 2013, Sze represented the United States at the Venice Biennale with an exhibition called Triple Point. [9]

On January 1, 2017, a permanent installation commissioned by MTA Arts & Design of drawings by Sze on ceramic tiles opened in the 96th Street subway station on the new Second Avenue Subway line in New York City.[10]

In 2020, Sze unveiled Shorter than the Day, a permanent installation, in LaGuardia Airport[11][12]

In 2021, Sze unveiled her most recent permanent installation, Fallen Sky, at Storm King Art Center,[13] Cornwall, New York.

For her 2023 exhibition called Timelapse at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, Sze created a series of site-specific installations through the Frank Lloyd Wright building.[14]

In 2023, Sze transformed a large Victorian waiting room at Peckham Rye Station in London into an immersive installation called The Waiting Room.

In 2023, Sze was featured in Art21's New York Closeup Series.[15]

Personal life[edit]

Sze has one brother, the venture capitalist David Sze. Sze lives in New York City with her husband Siddhartha Mukherjee and their two daughters.[6] Sze’s great-grandfather, Alfred Sao-ke Sze, was the first Chinese student to go to Cornell University. He was China’s minister to Britain and later ambassador to the United States. Her grandfather is Szeming Sze who was the initiator of World Health Organization.[citation needed]

Process[edit]

Sze draws from Modernist traditions of the found object, to build large scale installations.[16] She uses everyday items like string, Q-tips, photographs, and wire to create complex compositions resembling constellations.[17] This composition gives her work a chaotic yet precise style with the overlap of materials. All objects, regardless of size,[18] are related to one another. This creates a larger meaning in her work as all of the pieces come together to convey a message. By Sze remolding and reshaping these everyday objects, she additionally changes the value of these materials.[19] The incorporation of these "low value" objects rejects the traditional standard that sculptures have to be solid, limited in geometric shapes, and work with specific materials. This can be displayed with Sze's intentional inclusion of the unseen process materials (ladders, clips, wooden poles, etc.)[20] being included in her final work.

Sze throughout her career has pushed the boundaries with sculpture. This can be seen with her using her works to convey movement. Through precise planning and strategic considerations, Sze strives to make the inanimate look animate.[21] Using influences from her formal training in painting and architecture, Sze looks into what one can do with a sculpture that is limited to the two-dimensional.[22]The effect of this is to "challenge the very material of sculpture, the very constitution of sculpture, as a solid form that has to do with finite geometric constitutions, shapes, and content."[23]

Sze additionally takes into consideration the viewers interaction[24] with her works and the objects she has chosen to display. When selecting materials, Sze focuses on the exploration of value acquisition–what value the object holds and how it is acquired. In an interview with curator Okwui Enwezor, Sze explained that during her conceptualization process, she will "choreograph the experience to create an ebb and flow of information [...] thinking about how people approach, slow down, stop, perceive [her art]."[3]

significance[edit]

Sze's work encapsulates how an individual perceives everyday life and their environment. The recording of objects with memory is one of the ways Sze represents this idea. In her works like Timekeeper, Sze Creates a time capsule,[25] allowing her to directly connect with the objects she utilized with the piece to the year. With Sze reconstructing former works, she has the record of what she originally used but now can add new materials, creating an entirely new time capsule. Time itself is a strong theme Sze plays into with the concept of the multiplicity of the unknown[26]. This is created by her works veering off the canvas in multiple directions leads to this theme of the plurality of the unknown. Time and memory in Sze's work can also be seen with the distortion of images throughout time. Sze in her print installations has referenced prior works, relying on memory to reconstruct the former work in her current project. This not only reflects her prior work but also highlights how objects change over time in memory. Sze goes into additional detail about pictures and how this method can be used to retain a sculpture.[27] Sze choice of materials is one of the key factors when taking in her works. The inclusion of these mass-produced objects additionally alludes to domestic life and the feeling of overabundance and growth.[28] Having these daily objects collected, layered, or stacked on one another can be seen into her conveying an overwhelming or cramped space.

By working with sculpture, Sze is conscious of the space not only her work is located but also the space her works create. Sze's spherical work creates the opportunity for viewers to walk inside the work[29], creating an immersive experience. This choice is made whether or not the audience is aware when they enter the work they are part of the work or not. With Sze's background and upbringing in architecture, she is methodical in how visitors will encounter her work and how a gallery space will shape and form her work. This consideration deepens Sze's contemplation of whether there is a history to tell with the architecture or if it is there to guide the audience. The space Sze creates in her works reflects her choice of objects, creating a relationship with her work and the location where they intertwine. Within the space Sze creates especially with her suspending installation works, there is a feeling with these works of fragility to them. Yet through the deliberate process of aligning every object to one another, there is a strategic method[30] to its fragile look.

With works located in the natural environment, Sze also takes into consideration the context where her work will reside. This can be seen in what she wants her works to not only convey but be of value. With her Storm King Art Center permanent commission, Fallen Sky creates the infusion and disintegration of the extra-terrestrial material to become one with the ground.[31]Other outside installations like Still Life with Landscape take into consideration the natural habitat and include those needs with the structure, creating a seamless interconnection with the composition of the work.[32]

Exhibitions[edit]

Sze has staged a large number of solo exhibitions and shows across the United States and internationally. Her notable solo exhibitions include White Room (1997), White Columns, New York;[33] Sarah Sze (1999), Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago;[34] Sarah Sze: The Triple Point of Water (2003-2004), originating at the Whitney Museum, New York;[35] Triple Point (2013), American pavilion, 55th Venice Biennale;[36] and Sarah Sze: Timelapse (2023), Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.[37]

Sze has also participated in a wide array of group exhibitions, including the Berlin Biennale (1998);[38] 48th[39] and 56th Venice Biennale[40] (1999, 2015); Whitney Biennial (2000);[41] and Liverpool Biennial (2008).[42]

Notable works in public collections[edit]

Awards and grants[edit]

  • 2022 - Asia Arts Game Change Award[61]
  • 2020 - Inductee, American Academy of Arts and Sciences[62]
  • 2018 – The American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York[63]
  • 2013 – US Representative for the Venice Biennale[64]

References[edit]

  1. ^ "Sarah Sze". Columbia University School of the Arts. Retrieved September 18, 2018.
  2. ^ "Sarah Sze - Artists - Tanya Bonakdar Gallery". tanyabonakdargallery.com. Retrieved March 1, 2020.
  3. ^ a b Enwezor, Okwui (May 23, 2016). Sarah Sze. Sze, Sarah, 1969-, Buchloh, B. H. D.,, Hoptman, Laura J., 1962-. London. ISBN 978-0-7148-7046-5. OCLC 930797762.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  4. ^ "Sarah Sze: Studio as Laboratory". Art21. Retrieved March 1, 2020.
  5. ^ Miro, Victoria. "Sarah Sze - Artists - Victoria Miro Gallery". Victoria-miro.com. Retrieved September 18, 2018.
  6. ^ a b Kazanjian, Dodie (May 11, 2016). "Meet the Most Brilliant Couple in Town". Vogue.
  7. ^ a b "Sarah Sze". Victoria Miro. Retrieved September 18, 2018.
  8. ^ "Sarah Sze". Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. Retrieved May 19, 2023.
  9. ^ Vogel, Carol (May 30, 2013). "At Venice Biennale, Sarah Sze's 'Triple Point'". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved May 19, 2023.
  10. ^ Kennedy, Randy (December 19, 2016). "Art Underground: A First Look at the Second Avenue Subway". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved January 13, 2017.
  11. ^ Sheets, Hilarie M. (June 10, 2020). "Art That Might Make You Want to Go to La Guardia". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331.
  12. ^ Cochran, Sam (July 5, 2020). "This Ethereal Installation is Transforming LaGuardia". Architectural Digest. Retrieved July 10, 2020.
  13. ^ van Straaten, Laura (May 20, 2021). "At Storm King, 2 New Works Faced a Challenging Birth". The New York Times. Retrieved March 15, 2022.
  14. ^ "Sarah Sze: Timelapse". Guggenheim. Retrieved April 18, 2023.
  15. ^ "Emotional Time, Sarah Sze". Art21. Retrieved June 15, 2023.
  16. ^ "Sarah Sze". Art21. Retrieved April 13, 2017.
  17. ^ Josenhans, Frauke V. (2017). "Sarah Sze: The Hidden Poetry of the Everyday". Yale University Art Gallery Bulletin: 16–23. ISSN 0084-3539.
  18. ^ Glover, Izi (June 1, 1998). "All kinds of everything". MAKE: The Magazine of Women's Art (80): 34–35.
  19. ^ Sze, Sarah (September 30, 2019). How we experience time and memory through art. Retrieved May 9, 2024 – via www.ted.com.
  20. ^ Sarah Sze – ‘You Mark Time Through Objects’ | Artist Interview | TateShots. Retrieved May 9, 2024 – via www.youtube.com.
  21. ^ Schwabsky, Barry (October 1, 1999). "SARAH SZE". Artforum International. 38 (2): 143–143.
  22. ^ Balance. Tatge, C. (Director). (2012).[Video/DVD] Public Broadcasting Service. Retrieved from https://video.alexanderstreet.com/watch/Balance-2
  23. ^ "Sarah Sze on Why She Had to Invent a New Way of Making Sculpture". Artspace. Retrieved April 13, 2017.
  24. ^ "Meet the Most Brilliant Couple in Town". Vogue. Retrieved April 13, 2017.
  25. ^ Sarah Sze – ‘You Mark Time Through Objects’ | Artist Interview | TateShots. Retrieved April 22, 2024 – via www.youtube.com.
  26. ^ Jean Louis Scefer. “Art as a tightrope”. In Sarah Sze. Sarah Sze,( London; New York: Thames & Hudson, 2000), 20-26.
  27. ^ Sze, Sarah (September 30, 2019). How we experience time and memory through art. Retrieved April 22, 2024 – via www.ted.com.
  28. ^ John Slyce. “The Imagined Communities of Sarah Sze”. In Sarah Sze. Sarah Sze (London: Institute of Contemporary Arts, 1998), 6-16.
  29. ^ Mavrikakis, Nicholas (July 1, 1999). "Sarah Sze (exposition)". Parachute: Contemporary Art Magazine (in French) (99): 41–2.
  30. ^ Deprez, Eleen M. (June 1, 2020). "Installation Art and Exhibitions: Sharing Ground: Symposium: Installation Art". academic.oup.com. doi:10.1111/jaac.12739. Retrieved April 22, 2024.
  31. ^ Sheynfeld, Irina (2021). "Journeys: Sarah Sze and Rashid Johnson at Storm King Art Center". Cross Currents. 71 (4): 457–462.
  32. ^ Balance. Tatge, C. (Director). (2012).[Video/DVD] Public Broadcasting Service. Retrieved from https://video.alexanderstreet.com/watch/Balance-2
  33. ^ "White Rooms: Sarah Sze". White Columns. Archived from the original on November 21, 2022. Retrieved December 4, 2022.
  34. ^ "Sarah Sze". MCAChicago. Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Archived from the original on June 4, 2022. Retrieved December 4, 2022.
  35. ^ "Sarah Sze: The Triple Point of Water". Whitney. Whitney Museum. Archived from the original on December 4, 2022. Retrieved December 4, 2022.
  36. ^ Vogel, Carol (May 31, 2013). "At Venice Biennale, Sarah Sze's 'Triple Point'". The New York Times. Archived from the original on October 19, 2022. Retrieved December 4, 2022.
  37. ^ "Sarah Sze: Timelapse". Guggenheim. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Archived from the original on December 4, 2022. Retrieved December 4, 2022.
  38. ^ "KW Institute for Contemporary Art Archive". KW-Berlin. KW Institute for Contemporary Art. Archived from the original on December 4, 2022. Retrieved December 4, 2022.
  39. ^ "Padiglione Central". Google Arts & Culture. Biennale Foundation. Archived from the original on December 4, 2022. Retrieved December 4, 2022.
  40. ^ "Biennale Arte 2015". LaBiennale. Biennale Foundation. October 23, 2017. Archived from the original on December 4, 2022. Retrieved December 4, 2022.
  41. ^ "Whitney Biennial 2000". Whitney. Whitney Museum. Archived from the original on June 30, 2022. Retrieved December 4, 2022.
  42. ^ "Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art Archive". Biennial. Liverpool Biennial. Archived from the original on November 14, 2022. Retrieved December 4, 2022.
  43. ^ "Seamless". Tate. Archived from the original on May 26, 2022. Retrieved December 4, 2022.
  44. ^ "Many a Slip". MOCA. Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Archived from the original on June 29, 2016. Retrieved June 28, 2022.
  45. ^ "Strange Attractor". Whitney. Whitney Museum. Archived from the original on February 23, 2022. Retrieved June 28, 2022.
  46. ^ "Things Fall Apart". SFMoMA. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Archived from the original on December 4, 2020. Retrieved June 28, 2022.
  47. ^ "Untitled (Table Top)". Harvard Art Museums. Harvard University. Archived from the original on April 22, 2021. Retrieved June 28, 2022.
  48. ^ "Grow or Die". Walker Art. Walker Art Center. Archived from the original on August 3, 2021. Retrieved June 28, 2022.
  49. ^ "The Letting Go". MFA. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Archived from the original on June 28, 2022. Retrieved June 28, 2022.
  50. ^ "Everything in its right place". NGV. National Gallery of Victoria. Archived from the original on September 12, 2019. Retrieved June 28, 2022.
  51. ^ "The Art of Losing". Kanazawa. 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa. Archived from the original on November 20, 2022. Retrieved November 20, 2022.
  52. ^ "Blue Poles". List Art. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. January 13, 2022. Archived from the original on April 23, 2022.
  53. ^ "Second Means of Egress (Orange)". Albright-Knox. Buffalo AKG Art Museum. Archived from the original on January 12, 2022. Retrieved June 28, 2022.
  54. ^ "Sexton (from Triple Point of Water)". DIA. Detroit Institute of Arts. Archived from the original on June 28, 2022. Retrieved June 28, 2022.
  55. ^ "Proportioned to the Groove". MCA Chicago. Archived from the original on June 28, 2022. Retrieved June 28, 2022.
  56. ^ "360 (Portable Planetarium)". NGC. National Gallery of Canada. Archived from the original on June 28, 2022. Retrieved June 28, 2022.
  57. ^ "Triple Point (Pendulum)". MoMA. Museum of Modern Art. Archived from the original on February 23, 2022. Retrieved June 28, 2022.
  58. ^ "Mirror with Landscape Leaning (Fragment Series)". Yale Art Gallery. Yale University. Archived from the original on June 28, 2022. Retrieved June 28, 2022.
  59. ^ "Plywood Sunset Leaning (Fragment Series)". Cleveland Art. Cleveland Museum of Art. October 30, 2018. Archived from the original on April 17, 2021. Retrieved June 28, 2022.
  60. ^ "Split Stone (Northwest)". WWU. Western Washington University. Archived from the original on June 28, 2022. Retrieved June 28, 2022.
  61. ^ "Sarah Sze: 2022 Asia Arts Game Changer Awards". Gagosian. May 10, 2022. Retrieved June 7, 2023.
  62. ^ "Sarah Sze: American Academy of Arts and Sciences". Gagosian. April 28, 2020. Retrieved March 15, 2022.
  63. ^ "Six Women Inducted Into the American Academy of Arts and Letters". Women In Academia Report. June 18, 2018. Retrieved February 23, 2022.
  64. ^ Vogel, Carol (February 23, 2012). "Installation Artist Picked for Venice 2013". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved February 23, 2022.

Further reading[edit]

External links[edit]

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