Sarah Sze

Sarah Sze is creating a site-specific sculptural installation for Malmö Konsthall. The installation will fill the entire exhibition space and interact with the surrounding architecture. A complex network of patterns, structures and details works together to create movement through the space. It is like a spontaneous organism that overflows, takes off, flows, hovers, and finally conquers the entire space. Many small individual components work together to create a greater whole. The components are formed out of small everyday and trivial objects which Sze carefully and thoughtfully combines and links into an airy and transparent structure.

With a technique that is both painterly and sculptural, and with the interplay between the individual components and the overall whole, Sze explores the boundaries between art and everyday life.

The installation offers many angles of approach and can scarcely be experienced all at once or be captured in a single glance. There are many components and details to be discovered gradually as the visitor explores the sculpture. Some of these are very vulnerable and fragile, while others are more distant and unreachable.

The materials Sze uses are well known from everyday life and we recognise them from our immediate surroundings. She always acquires most of her materials from the location where the installation will be exhibited. A hammer from the United States does not look like one from Japan. She often finds what she needs in the building supply stores which are now so common. Objects she often uses in her sculptures range from matches, wool and cables to plants, fans and ladders.

She often chooses to use several thousand examples of the same object. When these everyday objects are placed close together to form entire swarms their original intended use is transformed. Their meaning and significance are changed and together they acquire a more organic affinity with each other.

Sarah Sze was born in Boston in 1969 and lives and works in New York. She studied at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut and at the School of Visual Art in New York. She has exhibited at a number of locations around the world, including the Venice Biennale in 1999, the Whitney Museum in New York in 2003, and the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London in 1998. This is her first solo exhibition in the Nordic countries.

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Sarah Sze
A Swiftly Tilting Planet