Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava
“I bring together the materials I find around me. I gather them to try and create immersive experiences that occupy rooms, that occupy walls, landscapes, buildings, but ultimately I want them to occupy memory.” Sarah Sze, TED Talk.
Crescent (Timekeeper), 2019, Mixed media
In the 4 1/2 years of NHNYC I’ve never yet called a Contemporary Artist a genius. Until now. [Drum roll]
Sarah Sze is a genius in my opinion.
As I take stock of the Art I saw in 2019, along with Jean-Michel Basquiat at The Brant Foundation (which I looked at here), the most unforgettable show I saw this past year was Sarah Sze at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery. As I write this three months after it closed, it’s at the front of my memory of everything I saw last year.
Overflowing. Sarah Sze began on the outside(!) of the gallery’s doors and windows.
Detail of part of Images in Refraction (West) on the western part of the facade of Tanya Bonakdar Gallery (to the left in the previous picture) reveals the multimedia nature of what’s on view inside, and the multi-dimensional talent of the Artist. Painting, Sculpture, Collage, Engineering & Architecture, Photography, Film, Installation- you name it. You get it. And then some.
I’ve seen her gallery shows over the past decade, and each time, I left shaking my head. Part sculpture, part installation, part construction project, part hardware store free-for-all, they were always impossible to fully take in at one look. You saw their shape from a distance and admired the overall composition, and then learned the devil was in the detail, and the detail, and the seemingly endless detail. Still, I wasn’t prepared for her expansion into multi-media, including the debut of her Paintings, she presented on West 21st Street this fall where not even two floors, the reception area, the ancillary walls, both sides of the galleries windows, doors, or the space under the stairs were enough to contain her seemingly boundless creativity.
Looking out at the view seen previously of Images in Refraction (West), with installation on the wall, right, leading to the first gallery.
Not to mention 4 galleries filled with her trademark seemingly infinite detail.
Detail of the ever-changing projection that filled the walls surrounding Crescent/Timekeeper.
After the lead-in provided by entering the gallery and passing through the prelude in the reception area, Crescent (Timekeeper), 2019, turned the large gallery into a fully immersive experience from the moment you entered the space and tried to take it all in from about 25 feet away, as may be seen in the very first image above, like some alien craft in a pre-2001:A Space Odyssey 1960s sci-fi movie. “Yes. Something landed…and…it’s glowing! Moving in for a closer look. Tell Lana I love her…” Situated near one far corner allowed embedded rotating projectors to have much of the surrounding walls to themselves engulfing you as you enter the space.
Close up/Details of the center section of Crescent (Timekeeper). Stepladders are a recurring motif in Sarah Sze’s work. As she’s said, “Everything you need to make the piece is in the piece.”
As you approach between two “arms” extending out on the floor, you realize that the center section contains about 50 screens of varying size. Standing there for a few moments reveals each one of those screens contains projected images moving independently of each other. Yet, tracing them back, you find only a few overhead projectors. ? On one visit the work struck me as an almost nostalgic look at life on earth. Suffice it to say, you need to experience it for yourself.
To the stars…Gazing at the top of the “superstructure” of Crescent (Timekeeper), 2019, Mixed media.
With so much to see in just this work, I was somewhat shocked when I realized Crescent (Timekeeper) wasn’t the only “monumental” work on view!
Detail, part of one of 4 walls that makes up After Studio, 2019, with the work Surround Sound (After Studio), 2019, Oil paint, acrylic paint, acrylic polymers, ink, aluminum, archival paper, disband and wood, 103 1/4 x 130 inches, center. No Photo can begin to covey what it was like to be in this work, which is what visitors to this space were, but looking at the piece on the wall, center, the first “Painting” by Sarah Sze I’ve seen, might begin to.
In a smaller, rear, gallery on the first floor, I encountered one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen in an Art show- what looked to be a complete (re)construction of one of her studios down to the last detail. A work titled After Studio, 2019. It appeared to me to center around a series of Paintings by Sarah Sze, the first I’ve ever seen, though they are as much Collage as Painting. ”In the age of the image, a painting is a sculpture,” Sarah Sze said in 2019.
Details of details from the right of center section of Surround Sound (After Studio) seen above.
That sentiment puts her in the direct line of Picasso & Braque’s Cubism, Marcel Duchamp, Joseph Cornell, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Jack Whitten, Frank Stella and, more recently, Mark Bradford and Julie Mehertu. With everything Sarah Sze includes in her Paintings, two things struck me as particularly interesting- her use of Photography (apparently her own), and her “use” of words. They’re there, if you look closely, but they almost exclusively appear to be “notes to self” rather than to others on “post-it” like notes. I was told that the Artist went back and replaced each one with archival equivalents as she completed the work. Yes Surround Sound (After Studio) is complete, and some very astute museum bought it.
The corner of the opposite and adjacent walls. Remind yourself- You’re in a gallery.
I returned to experience After Studio again and again and it felt to me like I was walking around in the Artist’s mind. Often when I see Art, especially landscapes, I close my eyes to feel the presence of place in the piece in my mind’s eye. Here was one “landscape,” I couldn’t keep my eyes open long enough to drink in. Nary a foot of After Studio, save for the center space to move around it, lacked vision or wonder. When I left if for the last time on October 17th, I was fully in awe1.
Another detail, this one interesting for showing some of the Photographs the Artist may, or may not, use, along with what may happen to them on the way.
On the 2nd floor, the large back gallery contained more Paintings, and a Painted floor. All told, nine Paintings were in the show. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by the appearance of her Paintings, after all Sarah Sze studied to be a Painter for a decade before turning her attention to “make meaning of the things around us through materials2.” For me, as amazing as the installations are, the Paintings linger with me every bit as much. No small feat.
I am thrilled to see her interest in Painting return in stunning works like this. 12 Landscapes (After Object), 2019, Oil paint, acrylic paint, acrylic polymers, ink, aluminum, archival paper, disband and wood (triptych), 73 1/2 x 110 1/4 inches.
Detail of 12 Landscapes (After Object).
I was told the show took 2 1/2 weeks to install- for a show that only ran for 6 weeks!
Images in Translation, 2019, Mixed media.
Finally, upstairs in the Project Room, Images in Translation, 2019, was installed in the dark, making it very hard to get a shot of that comes close to doing it justice.
Detail.
Time to head downstairs and back outside.
Looking down from 2 flights above at Images in Refraction(East) under the stairs.
I then immediately started scrambling down West 21st Street to find the pieces of my exploded mind that had wound up on the ground. On September 21st, the opening day of the “New” MoMA, two days after Sarah Sze ended, I discovered this installed on the 6th floor-
Sarah Size, Triple Point (Pendulum), 2013, seen at MoMA, Opening day, September 21, 2019
Sarah Sze’s Triple Point (Pendulum), a work that was originally shown at the 2013 Venice Biennale when the Artist represented the USA, was on display, front and center, in the exhibition Surrounds: 11 Installations.
The immersive experience Sarah Sze gives us in Blueprint for a Landscape in the 96th Street 2nd Avenue Station is based on a fantasy of the construction of Hudson Yards, which is no where near it.
Though that show, too, has now ended, New Yorkers are able to see Sarah Sze’s work anytime- 24/7/365. Ms. Sze created the Art in the 96th Street Subway Station on the new 2nd Avenue line, which opened in 2017, making her one of a handful of Artists who’s work was installed during the creation of the brand new Subway Station it will be seen in permanently. I’ve lauded before the taste of those charged with selecting Art for the Subway, and here’s yet another instance of brilliant vision, in my opinion. Here’s a look for readers without a MetroCard. I can’t help thinking that in 100 years, people will treasure this remarkable video of both the construction of the Station and the Artist actually there, giving a walkthrough-
Sarah Sze is moving between Sculpture, Painting, Photography, Film, Installation and collage in new ways, creating results that have never been seen before. Her work is like the city, like the forest, like a home, and filled with elements, reminders, and the detritus of each. And, in a work like Crescent (Timekeeper), it’s full of what will be memories and associations in the form of images. To what end? As in all great Art, that’s left to each viewer to decide.
More details of After Studio
In my view, though the show marks something of a new “period” in her work, it’s seamless with what’s come before. Already a world famous Artist, could it be that she’s only scratched the surface of her talent? A year ago I’d be shocked to have said that about her work. Now? I’m ready to bet on it.
I have no idea how she conceives her pieces, but in each one of Sarah‘s shows- literally, never more than in her most recent show, I felt like I was walking around inside of her brain.
Ah…so this is what it’s like to be a genius…
*Soundtrack for this Post is “Aurora” by Bjork from Vespertine.
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Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited.
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