BRONX, NY.- The Bronx Museum of the Arts will present Sarah Sze’s work Triple Point (Planetarium), one of the works created by the artist for the acclaimed U.S. Pavilion at the 2013 Venice Biennale. Known for her large-scale gravity-defying sculptures, Sze transformed the U.S. Pavilion with an elaborate sequence of works collectively titled Triple Point. The Bronx Museum served as the commissioning institution for the 2013 U.S. Pavilion, and bringing the work Triple Point (Planetarium) to the museum continues the Museum’s commitment to drawing international connections for its diverse audience of Bronxites, New Yorkers, and visitors from elsewhere in the U.S. and abroad. Triple Point (Planetarium) will be on view July 3 through August 24.
Sarah Sze's work attempts to navigate and model the ceaseless proliferation of information and objects in contemporary life. Incorporating elements of painting, architecture, and installation within her sculpture, Sze investigates the value we place on objects and explores how objects ascribe meaning to the places and times we inhabit. The artist employs a constellation of everyday materials in her work, ranging from found objects and photographs to handmade sculptures and living plants, creating encyclopedic and accumulative landscapes. Sze sees sculpture as evidence of behavior and she leaves her own raw process of experimentation apparent in her work. As a result, her pieces often seem to hover in a transitional state, as if caught between growing and dying. Captured in this suspension, the works become self-perpetuating systems, seemingly capable of aspiration, decay, and renewal.
Like the scientific model it references, Triple Point (Planetarium) addresses our desire to quantify and understand the universe, while ascribing a fragile, personal system of order. Within this work, sculpture becomes both a device for organizing and dismantling information and a mechanism to locate and dislocate oneself in time and space. Bronx viewers will have the opportunity to carefully consider every shift in scale between the humble and the monumental, the throwaway and the precious, the incidental and the essential—themes with strong relevance in the Bronx and in the world.
“A critical aspect of The Bronx Museum’s goal as the commissioning institution for the U.S. Pavilion was to give our local audiences a way to connect to this major international exhibition,” said Holly Block, The Bronx Museum of the Arts’ Executive Director and a Co-Commissioner of the U.S. Pavilion. “Exhibiting one of the works from the Pavilion gives our visitors the opportunity to have a live experience with Sze’s work and interact with a sculpture of international acclaim that they’ve learned about from afar. It will be an exciting culmination of this more than two-year process.”
“We are so pleased to bring Sarah’s remarkable achievement, Triple Point (Planetarium), to the Bronx as a culmination of such a satisfying Venice project,” remarked Co-Commissioner Carey Lovelace. “It has been a great experience to work with Sarah in realizing her vision at the Venice Biennale, and we are thrilled to share one of her dynamic works with audiences in the U.S.”
The exhibition at the Bronx Museum of the Arts represents a return to the Bronx for Sze, who completed a large scale public art work, Momentum and its Conservation, at the Mott Haven High School in 2010, commissioned by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. The work, located in the atrium of the central building of the school complex, is a hanging spinning lattice that casts a trail of shadows onto the floor mimicking leaves, bolts, ladders, and cranes. The piece creates a dynamic world where elements seem to have breezed into the atrium and become frozen in the air, suspended and weightless.
Following her work at the 2013 Venice Biennale, Sarah Sze also presented her first solo exhibition in the Philadelphia area at The Fabric Workshop and Museum in December 2013. An Artist-in-Residence at the Museum, Sze presented a new work virally traversing the exhibition spaces, which created a narrative that unfolded as viewers navigated the galleries and experienced Sze’s reflection on time, exploration of movement, and investigation of material.
Work by Sarah Sze is also currently on view at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York, as part of the group exhibition “The Bigger Picture: Work from the 1990’s.” The exhibition is on view from June 12 - August 1, 2014.
Sarah Sze is a MacArthur Award-winning artist. Her works have been exhibited at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Serpentine Gallery, London; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Sze’s work has been featured in solo exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Art, London; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Malmo Könsthall, Sweden; Asia Society, New York; and the Cartier Foundation, Paris. Her work has been featured internationally at the 48th International Art Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia, 10th Biennale de Lyon, 5th Liverpool Biennial, 25th Sao Paulo Biennial, 1st Berlin Biennial, the 2000 Whitney Biennial, and the 1999 Carnegie International. She has also received critical acclaim for public commissions at New York City’s High Line; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge; and the Public Art Fund. Born in Boston in 1969, Sze received a BA from Yale University in 1991 and an MFA from the School of Visual Arts in 1997.
