Wilsey Distinguished Lecture: Sarah Sze

This is an Archive of a Past Event

Since the late 1990s, internationally acclaimed artist Sarah Sze has developed a signature visual language that challenges the static nature of sculpture. Sze draws from Modernist traditions of the found object, dismantling their authority with dynamic constellations of materials that are charged with flux, transformation and fragility. Captured in this suspension, her immersive and intricate works question the value society places on objects and how objects ascribe meaning to the places and times we inhabit. Coinciding with the explosion of information of the 21st Century, Sze’s work simultaneously models and navigates the ceaseless proliferation of information in contemporary life. Her encyclopaedic installations unfold like a series of experiments that construct intimate systems of order—precarious ecologies in which material conveys meaning and a sense of loss. Widely recognized for challenging the boundaries of painting, installation and architecture, Sze’s sculptural practice ranges from slight gestures discovered in hidden spaces to expansive installations that scale walls and colonize architectures.

Sarah Sze represented the United States at the Venice Biennale in 2013, and was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2003, and a Radcliffe Fellowship in 2005. She has exhibited in museums worldwide, and her works are held in the permanent collections of prominent institutions, including The Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum, and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York; The Fondation Cartier in Paris; The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago; The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the Museum of Modern Art in Los Angeles. Sze’s work has been featured in The Whitney Biennial (2000), the Carnegie International (1999) and several international biennials, including Berlin (1998), Guangzhou (2015), Liverpool (2008), Lyon (2009), São Paulo (2002), and Venice (1999, 2013, and 2015). Sze has also created public works for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and the High Line in New York. In 2016 Sze completed a permanent commission for the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s 2nd avenue subway line, 96th street station. Sze was born in Boston, Massachusetts and lives and works in New York City.

The Cantor Arts Center's Bobbie and Michael Wilsey Distinguished Lecture series was created by Mr. Michael Wilsey, a member of the Director's Advisory Board of the Cantor Center, and has brought speakers such as W. Richard West, former director of the National Museum of the American Indian, art critic Holland Cotter, scholar William Gerdts, a leading authority on American painting, and renowned artists Claes Oldenburg, Jaume Plensa and Wayne Thiebaud.