Sarah Sze
Sarah Sze
Spanning all three spaces, this is the artist's third solo show with the gallery and her first presentation in Europe since representing the United States at the 2013 Venice Biennale.
In the Wharf Road galleries the exhibition comprises three installations - one on each floor - that the artist has conceived as a series of different experiments that explore the construction and measurement of space, mass, time, and volume through the use of materials. Each one turns the viewer's sense of scale, gravity, and information on its head. Common objects like rocks, newspapers, and furniture mutate from something known, to something foreign, fragile, newly composed, and entirely transformed.
A new series of silkscreen prints also mark a singular moment in time – 1 January 2014 – and are based on newspapers gathered from around the world on that date, with all images replaced by depictions of the midnight sky. Several works from the series are installed at both the Mayfair and Wharf Road galleries in a sequence that follows the rotation of the earth as one year turned into the next.
Sarah Sze was artist in residence at The Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia in 2013 - 2014. The installations presented in the Wharf Road galleries, made in collaboration with The Fabric Workshop and Museum, have been reconceived and reconfigured especially for the London exhibition.
Sarah Sze was born in Boston in 1969 and lives and works in New York. She received a BA from Yale University in 1991 and an MFA from the School of Visual Arts in 1997. A MacArthur Fellow Award-winner, she is known for her large-scale installations that penetrate walls, suspend from ceilings, burrow into the ground, and stretch across museums. Sze studied painting and architecture, and intersected these disciplines to arrive at sculpture, where her formal interest in light, air and movement is coupled with an intuitive understanding of composition, colour and texture.
Sze's body of work addresses questions about the fragility of human behavior, the desire to model complex systems, and the impermanence of value and memory. To explore these ideas, she utilizes myriad everyday objects in her installations. Presented as traces of human behavior, these items, released from their commonplace duty, acquire a certain vitality and ambition. Assemblages of these objects become systems, capable of renewal, aspiration and decay, or repositories of memory and value. Her work ascribes a new understanding of purpose while questioning the process of imbuing any material – hand-made or industrially produced – with worth.
Related
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Interview
Posted
July 2 2024
Sarah Sze talks to The New York Times
The artists speaks with Marisa Mazria-Katz about her creative processes and her recent exhibition at Victoria Miro Venice. Marisa Mazria-Katz, The New York Times -
Exhibition
Posted
May 16 2024
Sarah Sze: Metronome at ARoS – Aarhus Art Museum
On view 18 May–20 October 2024, Sarah Sze's site-specific installation raises questions regarding our digital and image-saturated existence. Aarhus, Denmark -
Exhibition
Posted
January 29 2024
Sarah Sze at Nasher Sculpture Center
Shown across three gallery spaces, this new exhibition (on view 3 February–18 August 2024) will blur the boundaries between making and showing, process and product, digital and material, to question how objects acquire their meaning. Dallas, Texas -
Exhibition
Posted
December 10 2023
Sarah Sze’s Pictures at an Exhibition, is on view as part of the Thailand Biennial
In Sze's work — on view until 30 April 2024 at the Chiang Rai International Art Museum — an atmospheric construction of cascading lines spans from floor to ceiling to create a web of image fragments. Chiang Rai International Art Museum -
Talk
Posted
July 2 2023
Artist Talk: Sarah Sze at the Guggenheim Museum
In this talk, taking place on Tuesday 25 July 2023, Sarah Sze will discuss the series of site-specific installations currently on view at the Guggenheim Museum in her solo exhibition. The Guggenheim Museum, New York -
Exhibition
Posted
May 19 2023
Sarah Sze: The Waiting Room
For her long-awaited project with Artangel, Sarah Sze is transforming a large Victorian waiting room at Peckham Rye Station that has lain empty for almost 50 years. On view 19 May–16 September 2023. Peckham Rye Station, London -
Interview
Posted
April 26 2023
Sarah Sze talks to Erika Balsom in the May edition of Frieze
On the occasion of her show at the Guggenheim Museum, the artist discusses how shifts in scale and juxtaposition reflect an experience of time. Erika Balsom, Frieze -
Review
Posted
April 14 2023
Sebastian Smee reviews Sarah Sze: Timelapse in The Washington Post
‘ …Sze takes confounding complexity as a given — as something to embrace. That’s part of what makes her one of the most interesting artists alive.’ – Sebastian Smee Sebastian Smee, The Washington Post -
News
Posted
April 6 2023
Sarah Sze: Timelapse is reviewed by The New York Times
‘Sze nails the Guggenheim challenge with “Timelapse,” her installation of sculpture, video, paintings, photographs, plants and hardware-store supplies stacked, dangled and stretched throughout the museum.’ – Martha Schwendener Martha Schwendener, The New York Times -
Review
Posted
April 3 2023
Jerry Saltz reviews Sarah Sze: Timelapse at the Guggenheim Museum
‘...seeing Sze commandeer a big space is to experience her at her full powers.’ –Jerry Saltz Jerry Saltz, Vulture -
Exhibition
Posted
March 31 2023
Sarah Sze: Timelapse at the Guggenheim Museum
On view until 10 September 2023, Sarah Sze's site-specific installations transform the iconic Guggenheim architecture into a tool for timekeeping and a meditation on the multitude of ways that we mark and experience the passage of time. The Guggenheim Museum, New York -
Exhibition
Posted
July 5 2022
Sarah Sze features in Mondo Reale, the 23rd Triennale Milano
The Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain has been invited by Triennale Milano to be part of the 23rd International Exhibition. Mondo Reale (15 July–11 December 2022), curated by Hervé Chandès, Artistic Managing Director, is a reaction on the idea of mystery and unknown through the work of 17 international artists. Milan, Italy -
Commission
Posted
June 26 2021
Sarah Sze at Storm King Art Center
Opening on 26 June 2021, Fallen Sky is comprised of a deliberately incomplete and increasingly delicate 36-foot-diameter spherical cavity, sheathed in mirrored stainless steel. Storm King Art Center, New Windsor, NY -
Exhibition
Posted
October 16 2020
Sarah Sze: Night into Day opens at Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain
For her second solo show at the Fondation Cartier, Sarah Sze will create an immersive exhibition (24 October 2020–7 March 2021) in dialogue with Jean Nouvel’s building. With two new works, she offers a reverie around the proliferation of images transforming our relationship to our environment. Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, Paris -
Exhibition
Posted
July 27 2020
Tate Modern reopens, featuring Sarah Sze’s installation Seamless
Seamless, 1999, (on display until 22 November 2020) incorporates functional, human-scale items, for example a ladder. Other handmade elements, such as tiny bridges made from matchsticks, use a scale that relates to fictional miniature worlds. Spiralling structures also suggest the microscopic scale of molecular science. They resemble the double helix shape of DNA, molecules that determine the growth and reproduction of all living things. Tate Modern, London -
News story
Posted
June 10 2020
As reported in The New York Times, Sarah Sze’s ambitious installation for LaGuardia Airport’s new Terminal B is unveiled
'Sze's sculpture, titled “Shorter Than the Day,” after a line in an Emily Dickinson poem, functions almost like a timekeeper. She has engineered a vast matrix of metal rods that cohere into a monumental yet ethereal globe. Suspended from a central spot on the ceiling of the departures level, it descends through a cutaway in the floor and is visible floating overhead from baggage claim.' Hilarie M Sheets, The New York Times -
News story
Posted
March 5 2020
As reported in The New York Times, Sarah Sze has been commissioned to create a new permanent installation for La Guardia Airport
Sarah Sze has been commissioned by the Public Art Fund, the New York-based nonprofit for public art, in partnership with LaGuardia Gateway Partners to execute a large-scale project integrated throughout the architecture of the arrivals and departures hall of the new Terminal B, expected to open later this year, alongside commissions by Jeppe Hein, Sabine Hornig and Laura Owens. The New York Times -
Exhibition
Posted
February 4 2020
Sarah Sze: Images in Debris at MOCA Toronto
Constellatory, monumental, intimate and immersive, Images in Debris (on view 6 February–10 May 2020) is one in a series of sculptures by Sarah Sze where light, movement, images and architecture coalesce into a single, precarious equilibrium. Toronto, Canada -
News story
Posted
January 2 2020
Sarah Sze writes about her experience as the Alan Kanzer artist-in-residence at the Zuckerman Institute
An interdisciplinary collaboration between the School of the Arts and Zuckerman, the Kanzer program gives visual artists time to forge interactions with scientists working on the brain, the senses, perception, learning and memory. Sarah Sze, Columbia News -
Interview
Posted
December 10 2019
The Way I See It: Sarah Sze and Siddhartha Mukherjee on Louise Bourgeois’ Quarantania, I
In this BBC Radio 3 series, leading creative thinkers choose an artwork from the Museum of Modern Art, and talk about how it inspires or provokes, thrills or surprises them. Presented by Alastair Sooke. BBC Radio 3 -
Exhibition
Posted
October 10 2019
Sarah Sze’s Triple Point (Pendulum) goes on view at MoMA
First exhibited at the 55th Venice Biennale, where Sze represented the United States in 2013, the work hovers between many forms at once. MoMA reopens to the public on 21 October 2019. MoMA, New York -
Film
Posted
October 1 2019
Now online: Sarah Sze’s TED Talk How we experience time and memory through art
In this talk, recorded at TED in April 2019, Sze takes us on a kaleidoscopic journey through her work. -
Exhibition
Posted
June 29 2019
Expect the Unexpected, featuring Sarah Sze, opens at The Lowry, Salford
An eclectic and provocative exhibition (29 June–29 September 2019) of work by visual artists who incorporate elements of chance in their work, inspired by John Cage’s hugely influential performance piece 4’ 33”. The Lowry, Salford -
Talk
Posted
April 10 2019
Sarah Sze takes part in TED2019: Bigger Than Us
Held in Vancouver, this year's TED talks (15–19 April 2019) focus on the political and technological turmoil of the past few years, its consequences, and the questions that have arisen as a result. Sarah Sze will speak as part of Session 6 (17 April), Imagination. Vancouver Convention Centre -
Event
Posted
October 9 2018
Sarah Sze artist’s talk at Tate Modern
The artist discusses her practice at this evening talk (6.30-8pm, Thursday 15 November 2018) in conversation with Mark Godfrey, Senior Curator of International Art. Tate Modern -
News story
Posted
October 9 2018
The New York Times reports on Fallen Sky by Sarah Sze, Storm King Art Center’s first public commission in nearly a decade
Responding to a hollow in the ground, the work will be installed at the 500-acre sculpture park in 2020. Sara Aridi, The New York Times -
News story
Posted
June 29 2018
Read our Sarah Sze: Afterimage online publication
We are delighted to announce a new publication for the exhibition Sarah Sze: Afterimage, featuring a text by the artist and an essay by Jarrett Earnest. -
Review
Posted
June 28 2018
Time Out reviews Sarah Sze: Afterimage
★★★★ 'Afterimages are the ghostly pictures that float in front of a person’s eyes after they’ve stopped looking at the actual thing. The artworks in Sarah Sze’s exhibition of the same name are made up of not just one lingering image, but hundreds of them.' Rosemary Waugh, Time Out London -
Interview
Posted
June 17 2018
The Observer interviews Sarah Sze
'I don’t do Twitter or Instagram or Facebook. I feel like there’s enough information in my head already.' Killian Fox, The Observer -
Review
Posted
June 14 2018
Nick Compton writes about Sarah Sze: Afterimage in Wallpaper*
'This is a kind of cubism of the age of information overload, getting to the contemporary splintering, the attempt to contextualise and edit the daily rush of digital and IRL information.' Wallpaper* Nick Compton -
Channel
June 11 2018
Sarah Sze: Afterimage
‘You’re having this filmic way of reading images as they move, and you move, through space.’ In this film, the artist discusses the site-specific works in her new exhibition at Victoria Miro. -
Event
Posted
April 23 2018
Sarah Sze gives the Bobbie and Mike Wilsey Distinguished Lecture for 2018
The artist discusses her work in a free public talk (6-7.30pm, 10 May 2018) held at Stanford University. No registration is necessary. Doors from 5.30pm. Hauck Auditorium, Stanford University -
Interview
Posted
December 12 2017
Sarah Sze discusses the Tomb of Perneb in the Metropolitan Museum of Art as part of Phaidon’s The Artist Project
'I often think about how an inanimate object can somehow be alive – how you can breathe life into an inanimate object – which is a very old sculptural idea' Phaidon.com -
Exhibition
Posted
September 15 2017
Sarah Sze: Centrifuge at Haus der Kunst, Munich
Centrifuge (15 September 2017–12 August 2018) radically transforms visitors’ perception and experience of the museum’s Middle Hall. Haus der Kunst, Munich -
Channel
July 18 2017
Sarah Sze’s Hammock (For Rauschenberg) featured in ARoS Triennial
A new commission for the inaugural ARoS Triennial: The Garden, End of Times, Beginning of Times, Sarah Sze's Hammock (For Rauschenberg) stretches across a wooded ravine which drops sharply to the sea. Divided into three sections (The Past, The Present and The Future) the Triennial focuses on depictions of nature throughout history and features works by international artists. Sze's work is included in The Future, which explores artistic responses to environmental change. Film by outofsync-artinfocus.com. -
Exhibition
Posted
June 2 2017
A new work by Sarah Sze in ARoS Triennial
Sze's work Hammock (For Rauschenberg), 2017 is featured in The Future (3 June - 30 July 2017). Aarhus, Denmark -
News story
Posted
May 11 2017
Sarah Sze writes about her work Timekeeper in The New Yorker
“Timekeeper” is one way of portraying something we all know about time: it is not just a counting system that marks the passing of days. Sarah Sze, The New Yorker -
Exhibition
Posted
May 10 2017
Sarah Sze in Glasstress 2017, Venice
The exhibition (11 May - 26 November 2017) brings together leading contemporary artists to explore the creative possibilities of glass. Palazzo Franchetti, Venice -
Film
Posted
April 14 2017
Sarah Sze shares the process and inspiration behind her immersive artwork for the Second Avenue Subway in New York City
Inspired by the Italian Futurists and Russian Constructivists, Sze designed the work around “how we move through space.” art21.org -
Exhibition
Posted
March 10 2017
Sarah Sze: Timekeeper at Copenhagen Contemporary
The installation (10 March - September 3 2017) explores the origin of the moving image, and mirrors the endless flow of information that overwhelms us every day. Copenhagen Contemporary, Copenhagen, Denmark -
Picture story
Posted
March 3 2017
Sarah Sze featured in Lorna Simpson’s ‘Women in Art’ portfolio for US Vogue
Simpson captures a series of portraits of her female contemporaries. Vogue -
Exhibition
Posted
September 11 2016
Sarah Sze at the Rose Art Museum
For this solo exhibition (until 11 December 2016), Sze creates new, site-specific installations for the Lois Foster Wing. The Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts -
Interview
Posted
March 6 2015
Sarah Sze interviewed in The Telegraph
'It became interesting for me to erase this onslaught of current events and to insert images that completely lacked the idea of a specific moment and implied a vast and timeless space.' Louisa Buck, The Telegraph -
Channel
March 5 2015
Sarah Sze
Filmed in January 2015 on the occasion of Sarah Sze's exhibition across Victoria Miro, London's three gallery spaces. -
Gallery Exhibition
30 January - 28 March 2015
Sarah Sze
Sarah Sze's exhibition at Victoria Miro spans all three spaces. This is the artist's third solo show with the gallery and her first presentation in Europe since representing the United... Victoria Miro Gallery II -
Gallery Exhibition
30 January - 14 March 2015
Sarah Sze
Spanning all three spaces, this is the artist's third solo show with the gallery and her first presentation in Europe since representing the United States at the 2013 Venice Biennale.... Victoria Miro Mayfair -
Gallery Exhibition
20 June - 11 August 2012
Sarah Sze
Victoria Miro is delighted to announce an exhibition of new work by Sarah Sze, her second solo show with the gallery. Characteristic of Sze's expansive practice, the exhibition will comprise... Victoria Miro Gallery I -
Gallery Exhibition
1 - 22 September 2007
Sarah Sze
Sarah Sze's first exhibition with the gallery spans both floors. The work on the ground floor is new to the gallery, while the piece on the second floor incorporates a... Victoria Miro Gallery I