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Great Eastern Sun Art vs. Setting Sun Art #11: Sarah Sze @ Tanya Bonakdar Gallery
This week let's look at Sarah Sze's work on display at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery in Chelsea. Dr. Wiley and I visited the show two maybe three weeks back and at the time I had some time sensitive posts to write and I said aloud "I hope I have a window to write about this show! It's nuts! There's so much to SEE!" And Dr. Wiley agreed there was a lot to see.
We spent a while with Sze's sculptures. Maybe they're really installations. Who knows? Does it matter what they are labeled as? They're great big things made out of tiny little things. It seems there's no waste (these tiny squares of felt in the piece on the first floor are from a larger piece of felt located elsewhere in the same sculpture) that I could see. Recycled art. Self generative art.
I've been listening to a lot of blue grass and maybe that's the sound track to this work. It feels very honest, open, true, and of the earth. It looks like such effortless hardwork.
Here're some images that will knock your socks off. I'm not trying to sway your opinion on this. Maybe it's terrible. Maybe it's the settingest sun ever. Probably not. In any case I'd love to see you all check out the show and comment here with your thoughts on her work. Or don't see the show and comment based on these photos and words posted. The name of the game is participation!
Is this Great Eastern Sun Art or Setting Sun Art?
360 (Portable Planetarium) - detail
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About your question..
I've been to both floors of this show twice so far, and I saw totally new stuff the 2nd time; I'd go again in a heartbeat. Sze has not just rearranged the flotsam & jetsam of everyday life. She has made plaster casts of various items; she has wrapped milk cartons and pieces of wooden lath in carefully chosen color printouts; she has tied, taped, and set things teetering. There is creation as well as orchestration at work here. But your question -- is this rising or setting sun art? -- has me thinking. Do the installations leave me feeling uplifted instead of downtrodden? Sure. The sheer array fills me with wonder (not just at the amount of effort it must have taken to put the pieces in place, but also at the complexity of our stuff-filled world). And the piece in the back room upstairs leads the eye on a quirky line up to the skylight, where Sze has some potted plants growing happily in a corner. (A setting sun piece would have dead plants, for instance the room-sized installation of trees covered in dust & plaster at the Greater New York show at PS1; it felt dystopic.) Still, what's bugging me about this question is that I don't think Sze would find this opposition terribly useful. Not that it seems objectionable, but just that I think the worlk is getting at something more complicated than Great Eastern Sun vision. To stay within the metaphoric field, I'd say she's getting at a sense of mandala (and it's radical interconnectedness); the cosmic mirror (which is ultimately unfathomable), or perhaps simply of clear seeing (and perception unsullied by preconception). By isolating so many details, and combining them in improvisational patterns of provisional and coherence, she gets me to a place of being plain ol' wide-eyed. This relates to "rising sun art" in the sense that becoming receptive, open to seeing the next tidbit/truth, is a path to Great Eastern Sun vision, n'est-ce pas? But Sze isn't hitting us over the head with this vision. She's asking us to pick our way through the stuff, & to find our way to this path for ourselves. KLS
Very very clear and
Very very clear and thoughtful response KLS! The subtlety of her work IS impressive and beautiful and I hear you about Great Eastern Sun being not complicated enough a concept to fully articulate the work. That said, it's a great starting off point to get into the kind of analysis you're skillfully attempting here. Well done!
Me too
I wasn't responding to her work positively either before i saw this show -- I went back twice and spent good 30 minutes looking at details. Delicate balance and inventive imagination -- it was best show in chelsea that i've seen in that round next to henry darger show. There was so much order in her installation this time.
She's a great artist, it's
She's a great artist, it's somewhat troublesome that she's moved from a great big gallery to a lesser one since her big breakout a few years ago but I love the work, it's... well I don't know what exactly it is. It's careful, considered and precise, scattered, crazy and barely articulated. It keeps me guessing but not to the end that guessing is frustrating. The best Judy Phaff and Jennifer Stockholder do the same thing. It's abstraction with a subject.
C.moss.run...
Gleaning
I watched an Agnès Varda film last night, The Gleaners and I, about scavenging, appropriation, and consumption– in very broad artistic and historical terms. An exhibition of Sze’s happens to feature in the film. Contrasting the rough-hewn and almost naïve assembly of most junk-art bricolage, the pristine condition and organization of Sze’s work really jumps out at me. What does it mean that this is trash without trashiness?
recycling
I remember being very impressed with Marclay's use and reuse of his materials. No waste. Sze doesn't seem to actually throw anything away. It's all in there. Is there something to that? I think so.
kickoff comment
Oops, forgot to sign my name.
Brian D
kick off
When I first walked into this show, I was not impressed. I was really tired from walking around for four hours and needed food. I warmed up to it a bit but I remember thinking "so she made all this crap out of household items and put it on shelves. Its certainly impressive to make all this stuff and pile it on shelves but to what end?" How does it all connect? I was looking for all the detritus to collectively say something. It seems like a collection of made and found stuff interestingly arranged. I wanted more.
I missed the top floor which appears beautiful in the pictures. I'm more than willing to give it a second chance.
Careful
Why do we care about anything? I haven't responded positively to Sarah Sze's work before this experience. I'm heaps more open to others' art these days it seems. I'd spend some time with it. Definitely go see the 2nd floor.