Since the late 1990s, Sarah Sze (b. 1969, Boston, MA) has used a wide variety of media to explore the intersection of information, technology, materiality, and time. In her sculptures, she engineers elaborate assemblages from everyday objects held together in a delicate balance, as though perpetually on the cusp of metamorphosis. Sze’s works are a study in contrasts—plane and volume, stillness and movement, organization and chaos—whose simultaneous opposition and attraction create a sense of magnetic tension. Though precisely constructed, her large-scale installations express an organic, kinetic feel, emerging like an evocative gesture across an expanse of space.
Sze has presented recent solo exhibitions at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York City (2023, 2020); Tate Modern, London (2018); Haus der Kunst, Munich (2017); Asia Society, New York City (2011); and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City (2003). Notable group exhibitions include The Living End: Painting and Other Technologies, 1970–2020, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2024); Bright Signs: Spotlight on Video Art, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto (2024); Off the Wall, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA (2020); Surrounds: 11 Installations, the Museum of Modern Art, New York City (2019); and Process and Practice: 40 Years of Experimentation, Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia (2017). Sze’s work was also included in the 55th Venice Biennale (2013); the Bienal de São Paulo (2002); the 2000 Whitney Biennial; the 48th Venice Biennale (1999); and Carnegie International (1999). She was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2003. In 2017 a permanent tiled mural of Blueprint for a Landscape was unveiled at the 96th Street station of the Second Avenue subway in Manhattan. Sze’s work is in the collections of Brooklyn Museum, New York City; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Modern Art, New York City; Smithsonian American Art Museum; Washington, DC; and Tate Modern, London. Sze lives and works in New York City.
(as of 2023)
