I’m Sarah Sze I’m an artist
This is a piece that I actually made for the Carnegie International in 1999 in Pittsburgh
And it was put into storage for 19 years And it’s just come out of storage and been
reinstalled for the first time since then I have a background in architecture and in
painting so this work actually is this kind of interesting marriage of the two
So you see painting and architecture coming together to make a sculpture
So a lot of the decisions are very painterly decisions
The composition is a play between a very structured kind of composing and movement of something
like the brushstroke thrown across a room The objects are the same objects from 1999
and I think actually part of the idea was also that they would be objects that somehow
in their extremely practical use were sort of already perfected and might not change
Technology is totally the opposite If these were cameras from 1999 they’d be
unusable The idea of using hardware tools is an interesting
idea because this idea that all of the tools to make the piece then become the piece
That the work that a sculpture is a kind of tool for understanding space and time and
then the tools, almost like a kit, like everything you need to make the piece is actually in
the piece itself And there’s again, there’s a blurring
of the seam between what’s a tool to make things with or to use in a practical way and
what’s an aesthetic tool How do we use things aesthetically to understand
the world or to make things? So you find things like ladders or you see
the electricity You see all of the actual tools that you might
need, let’s say, to remake this piece Also it’s interesting in this piece I realised
reinstalling it, is the idea of the archive and how you sort of mark time through objects
So there are things in the piece that if you spend time with it you can see it was made
in 1999 And there are things I’ve added that actually
inform that it was reinstalled at this date So that this idea of a kind of collection
of objects that actually define or become a portrait of the behaviour of the time
There’s some evidence of it right here in a very archival way
So there’s actually the ID card from 1999 is in the piece and I’ve added actually
the Tate ID card as well So there’s a 1999 receipt up in this part
of the piece and then there’s a receipt from today
So in this space you can see here the backroom where the wall
So this is where you would never see if you were coming to the museum
But now with this piece it’s revealed that behind the museum walls there are all of,
and they’re incredible things There are all of these small spaces, these
kind of in-between spaces, that help create the experience of the museum as a seamless
space This is what the seams look like
So through these windows you get these sort of glimpses back here into this world and
enough so that you understand but you don’t know the full
So that puts you into the realm of the imagination That you start to imagine what the possibilities
of the building are behind the wall How do you make something that’s not live
feel live? How do you make a work that feels almost like
an echo system? That can be in the composition
That can be in the choice of materials That you feel like the materials are actually
active This has this thrust that starts this movement
that it moves very quickly and then it generates and collects and slows down in a kind of organic
way And having a humidifier, having a fan, having
lights in this piece so actually this idea of the air, the water, the light is all part
of the piece itself But I think what’s nice about this piece
is how do you take the mundanity of a space and the mundanity of things we know like a
wall or like, a common light or a common plant and put them in a situation where they transcend
where they are