Abstract

Sarah Sze is an artist of mixed media who explores the uses of found objects and how they relate to one another while making them look completely unfamiliar. She does this by using themes of contemporary culture, light manipulation, and unexpected modes of display which makes her pieces seem alive. She completed her MA in architecture and painting at Yale University and her MFA at the School of Visual Arts. She currently lives and works in New York and is a professor of art at Columbia University. She won a couple of awards including the 2003 MacArthur Fellowship and she represented the United States at the 2013 Venice Biennale. I was drawn to her because instead of sticking to one medium, she explores different media in each piece and in her entire collective work. She makes decorative pieces that aren’t just pretty but have a deeper meaning. The first piece that stood out to me was Hidden Relief because the monochromatic circles and organic shapes of the background contrasted greatly with the colorful found objects. While being all different colors, they still play off of each other and mesh well. The next piece I looked at was Shorter than the Day because it confused me. I thought they were mirrors reflecting the sky above. I like it more now that I know they aren’t mirrors because that would have been too predictable and this way it has a consistent look and brings sunshine to the middle of LaGuardia. The next piece, Plein Air, is similar to Shorter than the Day with the sphere of images and steel, but this time it moves and is alive. It is also an installation that is comprised of many other smaller pieces that all blend together and work with one another to make the whole room into an art show. Next is Timekeeper which blurs the line between organic and mechanical structure, its lifecycle marked by clicking and whirring and flickering images. It keeps a form of eccentric time that is entirely its own, remembering moments over and over again as time slips by. The last piece is An Equal and Opposite Reaction which is “a piece that is meant to be revisited and rediscovered over time, whether it be upon entering the performance in the early evening light and seeing it anew upon leaving the performance in the late evening light, or seeing it over the course of several visits to the stage over the years.”