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Sarah SzeContemporary American artist, sculptor
Country:
 USA |
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Biography of Sarah Sze
Sarah Sze is a contemporary American artist and sculptor known for her installations created from everyday objects. She was born in 1969 in Boston, USA. She studied at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, and at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Sarah Sze began exhibiting her work in 1996 in New York City. Since then, her works have been included in several major international exhibitions, including the Berlin Biennale (1998) and the Venice Biennale (1999). Her solo exhibitions have been held at White Columns in New York (1997), the Institute of Contemporary Art in London (1998), the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago (1999), and the Cartier Foundation in Paris (1999-2000). She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
Artistic Style and Work
Sze's sculptures, or rather constructions, are assembled from a large number of small household objects. Having lived in New York City and Tokyo, she constructs her works following a specific method. She visits nearby household stores and collects various small items such as clothespins, wires, and small plastic goods. She then builds her installations, starting from the floor, as seen in her work "Second Means of Egress" showcased at the Berlin Biennale in 1998. This intricate combination of multiple everyday objects shines with light bulbs, hums with fans, includes a gas cylinder and a potted flower, as well as numerous ladders. "I bring everything I have collected nearby to the designated space and arrange these ordinary things in a way that elevates their significance from the simply familiar to the personal and proprietary," the artist says. Critic John S. Sledge suggested interpreting Sze's works according to Fredric Jameson's concept of "dirty realism," referring to a vision of urban experience that makes it "one enormous, unrepresentable container, a collective space where the contradiction between external and internal is annulled." The power of Sarah Sze's creativity lies in its complete and reconciled inclusion in two usually separate spheres of experience - the private territory of domestic life and the overcrowded space of the modern city.
