Sarah Sze

The Great Women Artists

Katy Hessel

Arts

4.8 • 877 Ratings

🗓️ 26 April 2023

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

THIS WEEK on the GWA Podcast, we interview one of the most renowned artists working today, SARAH SZE! Working across sculpture, painting, drawing, printmaking, video, and installation – and the culmination of them – Sze’s creations often take the form of a planetarium, a colosseum, a work-in-progress laboratory. Often held up by precarious stick-like structures and formed around everyday objects (and, more recently, moving images), her works behave – for me – as the greatest visual microcosm for the information and images inundating today’s fast moving, internet-filled world. In dialogue with art historical predecessors who worked with the readymade at the start of the 20th century – as well as challenging traditions in genres, such as the still life – Sze borrows from everyday materials. These include wire, congealed paint, tape measures, scissors, newspapers – as well as images and films taken on her iPhone as if to give prominence to mundane, mass-produced objects. Born in Boston, Sze earned a BA from Yale University and an MFA from the School of Visual Arts. Already when she was just in graduate school, an exhibition at MoMA PS1 saw her transform both the museum and sculpture itself. This quickly progressed to Sze working with projections and objects – from plastic water bottles to razor blades, q-tips and ladders – and work on an immersive scale that activated the viewer to be part of the time-based work, as well as challenging the notions that everything in her artworks is actually what is used to require to make the piece itself. In 2003, she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship; in 2012 she took over New York’s High Line; in 2013 she represented the US at the Venice Biennale; in 2017, her permanent mural “Blueprint for a Landscape” opened at the 96th Street station of the Second Avenue subway in Manhattan. Last month she opened a monumental exhibition titled “Timelapse” at the Guggenheim, and next month will transform a disused Victorian waiting room at Peckham Rye station in London into an installation commissioned by Artangel. FURTHER LINKS! https://www.guggenheim.org/exhibition/sarah-sze-timelapse https://www.victoria-miro.com/artists/33-sarah-sze/ https://gagosian.com/artists/sarah-sze/ https://www.artangel.org.uk/project/sarah-sze/ https://www.ted.com/talks/sarah_sze_how_we_experience_time_and_memory_through_art#t-542032 Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Research assistant: Viva Ruggi Sound editing by Mikaela Carmichael Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/ THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY OCULA: https://ocula.com/

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello everyone and welcome back to the Great Women Artist podcast. Last week's episode looked at the
0:06.6	incredible life of the street photographer Vivian Meyer and today we speak to the American artist Sarah Zee,
0:13.5	who through sculpture, installation and painting helps us understand how we experience images in the
0:19.8	21st century. She's just opened a marvel of an
0:22.6	exhibition at the Guggenheim and also features in my book, The Story of Art Without Men,
0:27.6	which is out in the UK and Europe and will be published on the 2nd of May in the US. So pre-order
0:32.5	your copy now. But I am delighted to say that this series is sponsored by Ocula, a premium gallery platform
0:39.8	magazine and advisory business, Ocula represents the best of contemporary art. Ocula.com provides
0:47.6	collectors, art world professionals and art enthusiasts with online access to exceptional artwork and compelling articles on artists and
0:57.5	the art world. Working with a very select group of the world's leading galleries, you can also use
1:03.2	ocular.com to search for information on and follow incredible artists like Sarah Z. I hope you
1:09.5	enjoy this episode.
1:14.3	Hello everyone and welcome to The Great Women Artist podcast with me, Katie Hessel.
1:20.6	Some of you might know me from The Great Women Artists, an Instagram account I set up in
1:24.5	October 2015, which celebrates female artists on a daily basis,
1:29.1	ranging from young graduates to old masters. Well, in a similar fashion to the Instagram,
1:35.0	this podcast is all about celebrating female artists from a variety of backgrounds and histories.
1:40.8	And I am so excited to be interviewing artists on their career or artists, writers,
1:45.7	curators or general art lovers on the women artist who means most of them. What I want this
1:51.2	podcast to do is celebrate female artists in all different capacities so you, the listener, can
1:56.9	gain a look into the greatest female artists working now or from art history.
2:02.9	I am so excited to say that my guest on the Great Woman Artist podcast
	...

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