Sarah Sze

On display were nine mixed-media-on-wood abstractions (all works 2019), six of which were installed in the ground-floor space along with the materials and tools used in their making, recreating the painting room of her large New York studio. This simulated workspace is an artwork in itself, titled After Studio. Cardboard covered areas of the floor and a large-scale photograph of Sze’s paint-splattered studio wall was taped onto an equally marked up wall of the gallery. There are a couple of small-scale paintings of abstracted landscapes leaned on or affixed to this photo, and work images and color samples are taped over and around them. On the opposite wall is Surround Sound (After Studio), a monumental triptych that metaphysically collapses both the time and space of her studio practice into it. 

Surround Sound (After Studio) is a massive mash-up of painted, photographed, and silkscreened elements assembled on three panels in a sculptural manner. Constructed from painted-over photographs of marks made on paper, the work is completely generative in the way that it uses and re-uses an influx of materials and images. It resembles a work in progress, with torn pieces of paper seemingly taped in place, but each piece of tape and post-it note indicating an area that still needs attention is in fact a reproduction on archival paper. All of the elements in the work, from the smallest brushstrokes to the largest patches of imagery, seem to be emanating from a central figure in the middle of a road, as if they are visual representations of the chaotic mind of someone surfing the internet on their phone. 

Exemplifying Sze’s continued fascination with sculpture as a medium, the other major work on the lower level, Crescent (Timekeeper), is one of the most complex installations she has ever created. Grounded by a scaffolding of sticks that extend from floor to ceiling in a crescent form, with torn photos of nature and debris such as plastic spoons and bottle tops placed on the floor, the immersive installation is a constellation of objects and images. A digital collage of video projections is perfectly aligned to hit torn pieces of paper affixed to the scaffold, creating a simulated ecosystem of birds, animals, clouds, sunsets and trash. Behind the structure, a rotating platform of projectors filled the surrounding walls with moving segments of clouds, fiery skies, and migrating birds mixed with shadows from Crescent’s architectural form. A light and a fan directed at a bowl of water cast rippling shadows on the ceiling to keep the repetition of mechanical elements from ever creating the installation exactly the same. 

On the second level, the floor painting After Object echoes Crescent’s curved form in splattered white paint. This is accompanied by three large-scale landscape paintings of miscellaneous marks and collaged elements related to the abstractions in the simulated studio below. But it is Images in Translation, the final work in the show, that provides the philosophical framework for Sze’s whole presentation. Aptly exhibited in the gallery’s Project Room, it breaks down the creation of the various pieces through a dynamic display of fragmented images on a computer screen, projected videos of sculptural forms, and torn printed pictures. The plethora of imagery simulates how an endless flow of images is a substitute for experience.