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Artist builds a mystery for Carnegie International
Thursday, October 21, 1999 By Mary Thomas, Post-Gazette Art Critic
"The museum turns into a studio space," explains Brooklyn artist Sarah Sze. "All of the decisions are made here."
Sze has just come down from a ladder in the Carnegie Museum of Art's Heinz Galleries, which have been buzzing with activity for weeks as Carnegie International artists have arrived from around the globe to deliver, fine-tune or construct their works for the Nov. 6 opening.
Art has changed since the first International in 1896, when paintings or sculpture were shipped, completed, to the museum. This 53rd such exhibition will stride fashionably into year 2000 with an assortment of contemporary expression that includes video, film, photography, painting and sculpture.
And installation, a catch-all term that has at times been dubiously applied but that seems to have been coined for Sze's form of expression.
Behind the papered-over glass doors of the galleries are makeshift tables cluttered with colored threads, clamps, strainers, hundreds of Q-tips and glue -- lots of glue. Strips of wood and blue plastic and copper tubing coil on the floor near boxes of tools. A dolly holds live and artificial plants.
There is only a moment to question the purpose of this odd assortment before the answer comes into view around a corner, where Sze's installation has taken over its space in the Carnegie like some exotic tropical life form thriving in its ideal habitat.
A seemingly tenuous, whimsical, miniature scaffolding of colorful, assembled objects climbs upwards toward (or tumbles from) an exposed skylight. Great sweeping arcs of thin, pliable wood soften corners and move through walls, at once breaking and unifying the harsh geometry of the museum. It transforms the cool, formal room into a place of wonder.
"A looming haze," as Sze describes it, that draws visitors in where she hopes they will feel "a sense of recognition and discovery in the process of looking" as they identify a matchstick, a glass bottle, a funnel -- each as improbable as the other, working in concert the way brushstrokes do to form a composition.
The latter is no idle comparison because, while the piece is dynamically three-dimensional, Sze says the creation of the work is more a "painterly process than a sculptural one. All the decisions are made in an improvisational way."
Her background in painting, drawing, sculpture and architecture all comes into play in her current work, and she especially enjoys the feeling of a "melding of painting and sculpture. What I loved about painting was the immediacy of the process and what I liked about sculpture was that it could break out of the frame -- it seemed more ambiguously mixed with real life."
The petite 30-year-old, who was born in Boston and received her education at Yale University and the School of Visual Arts in New York City, began exhibiting her work in New York in 1996. In three fast-paced years, she has shown in notable international exhibitions in Vienna, Berlin, Luxembourg and last summer's Venice Biennale.
Her busy itinerary places her presence at the Carnegie between an exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and one at the Cartier Foundation in Paris that, like the International, will continue into the year 2000.
Twelve-hour days at the Carnegie are the norm for Sze and two assistants, Patrick Barth and Zach Hadlock, who have come to Pittsburgh with her. Amanda Smith, an International volunteer with an art history degree from Allegheny College, has also lent a hand by gluing toothpicks into ladder shapes -- for 18 hours over three days.
Halfway through the week, they have arrived at, Sze says, a "place between," where the preliminaries are sketched in and they'll begin the final touches. "To work, it all has to come together." But this isn't an uncomfortable place for Sze, who finds the spot "where things become junctures" interesting.
For example, she see a juncture at "the place where the common, everyday objects become art and bring you into the realm of the imagination and the spectacular."
There's even play in perceiving the sense of scale, she says. The objects are "very well known and you can measure them, but you're constantly being pulled between knowing that these are very humble objects and that they're fictional."
Perhaps the most dramatic transition point is the seam between the old Carnegie building and the new Scaife wing, where her piece is located, something that isn't normally apparent to the visitor but which Sze has revealed in a manner somewhat "like an archaeological dig."
These are only some of the considerations that this ebullient piece inspires. Sze tries "to keep any one reading of the work at bay." What she does aim for is a sense of "monumental movement around you. A feeling of liveliness -- that you're entering into a moment. The nature of live music, as opposed to something that's recorded." She accepts a comparison to being at a jazz improvisation.
So what inspired her to breathe life into items so commonplace that we take them for granted? She says her current work "came from the idea of making something out of nothing." She gives the example of soap carving, which she's done in the past and which, she says, prisoners do because they're "confined and don't have much."
"Oil paint is so luscious to start with," she continues, adding that we recognize its status. "I'm interested in how we create value in our own lives, how we vest meaning in everyday things.
"For me, the most important thing about being an artist," Sze says, "is bringing up questions, creating a dialogue, contributing in some way. Here [at the Carnegie], you have a dialogue, which is a great privilege."
And it's one everyone can join in next month.
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