Sarah Sze

About the Exhibition

The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, presented a site-specific work by artist Sarah Sze from April 25 through August 1, 1999 as part of its ongoing Project Series. This was the Brooklyn-based artist’s first solo museum exhibition in the United States. Sarah Sze was made possible by generous gifts to The A. Jerry Luebbers Memorial Fund and is dedicated to the memory of A. Jerry Luebbers.

Sze’s small- and large- scale installations consist of carefully arranged found objects, such as toothpicks, pushpins, colored wire, match sticks, candy, aspirin, plants, and lights. These intricate constructions often suggest a miniature world of urban sprawl where each element is dependent on another. Her finished sculptures are not only architecturally sound, but suggest a living organism that moves, works and breathes. For past projects, Sze has utilized floors, balconies, ceilings, staircases, lit exit signs, and closets as sites for her installations.

"The dynamic installations of Sarah Sze are visual pleasures that stimulate our senses as well as our imaginations," said MCA Associate Curator Staci Boris. "Sze's structures are composed of everyday items yet provoke disorientation and discovery. Intricately balanced and inventively conceived, they create a realm that is both familiar and fantastic, ordered and chaotic."

Sarah Sze’s site-specific work at MCA incorporated numerous found materials and light and was created on-site during a ten-day installation period. The sculpture’s illumination came from within, relying not on overhead lighting but its own materiality to make it visible.

The work snaked through three rooms of varying size in the MCA’s fourth floor Turner Gallery and spilled out into the fourth floor lobby. Its final configuration was not completely conceived or developed until the opening of the exhibition.

Sarah Sze was given a one-person exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London in spring 1998 and has been included in numerous international group exhibitions, including the recent Berlin Biennial and ArtFocus in Jerusalem.

A 40-page publication with essays by MCA curators Staci Boris and Francesco Bonami including color images of Sze’s MCA installation is available at culturecounter now.

This exhibition was organized by MCA Associate Curator Staci Boris.