About the Exhibition
Since the late 1990s, Sarah Sze’s signature sculptural aesthetic has become one of the most iconic in contemporary art today. Working in a manner that could be called space-specific, Sze (b.1969, Boston, MA) uses assorted everyday things to compose installations and sculptures that dwell in gallery corners, hang on walls, and sometimes even burrow underground or creep out of windows. Each work is made of hundreds of objects, pieced together with precision and formal ingenuity. Her constructions resemble miniature galaxies, artificial microcosms, or visionary civilizations in which order and chaos keep one another in check.
Sze’s Public Art Fund commission Corner Plot unites the artist’s delicate and dazzling assemblages with her ongoing interest in architecture and the urban environment. The sculpture resembles the white brick apartment building that stands on the opposite corner across Fifth Avenue. Although it is in pristine condition, Sze’s structure seems to have sunk into the ground or perhaps slowly surfaced like an archeological relic. Through the building’s windows, viewers can see an interior vista extending several feet below street level. This underground cavity seems to be abandoned, yet a handful of clues remain as to the nature of the space: there is an illuminated light fixture on the ceiling, light switches and electrical outlets on the wall, as well as bookshelves and a ladder. The majority of the room is filled by a variety of objects that have colonized it from within: a tree, socks, an alarm clock, water bottles, vitamins, a reading lamp, salt, a scale, a wrench, an orchid, and many other things. This swirling, miniature ecosystem appears to descend into a vortex or grow up from the depths like barnacles or crystals, as if the objects have succumbed to some sort of natural process or force.