Skip to main content
Corner Plot - Public Art Fund
বাংলা (Bengali) 简体中文 (Chinese Simplified) 繁體中文 (Chinese Traditional) Nederlands (Dutch) English Français (French) Deutsch (German) Italiano (Italian) 日本語 (Japanese) 한국어 (Korean) Português (Portuguese - Brazil) Русский (Russian) Español (Spanish) Xitsonga (Tsonga) Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese)
I am looking for…
Suggested searches:
Ai Weiwei
Talks
SzeS 2355.jpg

Sarah Sze Corner Plot

Doris C. Freedman Plaza
May 2 - November 1, 2006

About the Exhibition

Since the late 1990s, Sarah Sze’s signature sculptural aesthetic has become one of the most iconic in contemporary art today. Working in a manner that could be called space-specific, Sze (b. 1969, Boston, MA) uses everyday things to compose installations and sculptures that dwell in gallery corners, hang on walls, and sometimes even burrow underground or creep out of windows. Each work is made of hundreds of objects, pieced together with precision and formal ingenuity. Her constructions resemble miniature galaxies, artificial microcosms, or visionary civilizations in which order and chaos keep one another in check.

Sze’s Public Art Fund commission Corner Plot unites the artist’s delicate and dazzling assemblages with her ongoing interest in architecture and the urban environment. The sculpture resembles the white brick apartment building that stands on the opposite corner across Fifth Avenue. Although it is in pristine condition, Sze’s structure seems to have sunk into the ground or perhaps slowly surfaced like an archeological relic. Through the building’s windows, viewers can see an interior vista extending several feet below street level. This underground cavity seems to be abandoned, yet a handful of clues remain as to the nature of the space: there is an illuminated light fixture on the ceiling, light switches and electrical outlets on the wall, as well as bookshelves and a ladder. The majority of the room is filled by a variety of objects that have colonized it from within: a tree, socks, an alarm clock, water bottles, vitamins, a reading lamp, salt, a scale, a wrench, an orchid, and many other things. This swirling, miniature ecosystem appears to descend into a vortex or grow up from the depths like barnacles or crystals, as if the objects have succumbed to some sort of natural process or force.

About the Artist

Sarah Sze    View Profile

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)

Photo Gallery

SzeS 2351.jpg
SzeS 2352.jpg
SzeS 2353.jpg
SzeS 2354.jpg
SzeS 2355.jpg

Location

Doris C. Freedman Plaza
Doris C. Freedman Plaza

Sponsored by Bloomberg. Additional support from Con Edison.

Corner Plot is a project of the Public Art Fund program In the Public Realm, which is supported by National Endowment for the Arts; New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency; the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs; The Greenwall Foundation; The Silverweed Foundation; and friends of the Public Art Fund.

Corner Plot is courtesy of Sarah Sze and Marianne Boesky Gallery.

This exhibition is made possible through the cooperation of the City of New York, Michael R. Bloomberg, Mayor; Patricia E. Harris, First Deputy Mayor; Department of Parks & Recreation, Adrian Benepe, Commissioner; and Department of Cultural Affairs, Kate D. Levin, Commissioner.


Related Exhibitions