It’s been two years since artist Sarah Sze represented the US at the 2013 Venice Biennale and five since she’s had a solo US gallery show.
From September 10th-October 17th, the Boston-born artist will take over Tanya Bonakdar Gallery in New York with an installation evoking the chaos and order of her studio space. Through a series of meticulously placed objects, the artist will comment on the fragmented nature of our information-packed world.
Last year, artnet News deemed Sze one of the most exciting artists of 2014. Since her 1997 New York debut at White Columns in Soho, the artist has had solo shows at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
For the upcoming show at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, Sze will use pendulums and models “that attempt to trace space and time,” according to the press release. “The randomness of all these things is actually really precise,” the artist told the New York Times.
When Sze was picked to be the US representative for the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013, she surprised previous critics with her articulate installation, Triple Point. The structure filled the US pavilion and snaked out into the open courtyard in the Giardini. After it came down, Triple Point spent the summer at the Bronx Museum.
Sarah Sze, ‘The Last Garden (Landscape of Events Suspended Indefinitely) (2015).
Image: Tanya Bonakdar Gallery/ Victoria Miro. Courtesy of the artist.
This year, Sze was invited back to Venice to make a smaller work. In a hidden garden, separate from the standard Biennale exhibition spaces, the artist installed a hammock surrounded by a few hanging rocks and delicate yarn as seen above.
While the work in every fair, biennial, triennial, public art installation and gallery show seems to be expanding by the minute, the pressure to look more closely is slowly fading. This year, immense neons and massive, Instagram-friendly installations dominated Unlimited, Art Basel’s platform for larger artwork. Public sculpture too, is becoming bigger and bolder, but not necessarily better. We’re becoming too used to taking in large installations as a whole and often we forget to approach the work and look for its subtleties.
In Sze’s highly detailed installations, it’s impossible not to question the physics of each compass, the tension of every string, and the vials of colorful liquid on display.
What might look like a random collection of unrelated objects is a meticulous and carefully-curated train of thought. Each object is there for a reason; look a little closer and discover a hidden world within.
“Sarah Sze” will be on view at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery September 10th-October 17th, 2015.
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