BRONX, NY.- The Bronx Museum of the Arts will present the work of Sarah Sze at the U.S. Pavilion at La Biennale di Venezia, the 55th International Art Exhibition, on view from June through November 2013. Sze will create a sequence of constructed environments that will activate the Pavilion’s architecture and extend beyond the building and into the courtyard—blurring perceptual boundaries between the site’s interior and exterior.
Sze, 43, has won acclaim for her gravity-defying, minutely detailed accumulative architectures that challenge viewers to experience space in unexpected ways. For the U.S. Pavilion, the artist will create new sculptural installations built by means of her hallmark accumulations of everyday materials. In Sze’s installations, everyday items such as coffee cups, plastic bottles and electrical fans become vital objects that challenge established boundaries between the throwaway and the precious, the mundane and the monumental.
The installation, titled Triple Point, will inhabit and directly comment upon the architecture of the 1930s Palladian-style structure of the U.S. Pavilion designed by famed architects William Adams Delano and Chester Holmes Aldrich, appearing to modify the building’s structure without actual physical change. As is often true of Sze’s work, the Pavilion will be a live site, evoking an ever-changing environment with a sense of events still shifting and unfolding.
“The Bronx Museum of the Arts is honored to have been selected as the commissioning institution presenting the work of Sarah Sze,” said Holly Block, a Co-Commissioner of the U.S. Pavilion, and the Bronx Museum of the Arts’ Executive Director. “Sze’s project for the U.S. Pavilion will create opportunities for public engagement and exchange both at a local level in Venice and at home in the United States, connecting directly to the community-oriented mission of the Bronx Museum. ”
“Sze’s boundary-defying work engages architecture and space, challenging the viewer by reorganizing reference points, disorienting and reorienting at every turn,” adds Co-Commissioner Carey Lovelace, a critic and independent curator. “Her ephemeral installations strike a balance between spectacle and poetry, with unparalleled potential to transform and invigorate the U.S. Pavilion.”
In conjunction with the installation, the Bronx Museum of the Arts will also create a dynamic online component with streaming video documenting Sze’s process of conceiving, fabricating, and installing the piece. This will extend the project’s reach beyond the Giardini and link Sze with a worldwide audience. The installation will also be accompanied by an illustrated publication.
The exhibition at the U.S. Pavilion is presented by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the U.S. Department of State, which supports the official United States participation at selected international exhibitions.
Sarah Sze was born in Boston in 1969. She received a BA from Yale University in 1991 and an MFA from the School of Visual Arts in 1997. She has received critical acclaim for her public commissions and site-specific installations, including recent commissions for the New York City High Line commission, the Cartier Foundation, the Carnegie International, and the Sao Paolo Biennial. A MacArthur Fellow and Louis Comfort Tiffany Award-winner, she has challenged architectures and captivated viewers with her large-scale constructions that penetrate walls, suspend from ceilings, burrow into the ground, and stretch across museums. Solo museum projects include at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and The Institute of Contemporary Art, London. An exhibition of Sze’s drawings, “Infinite Line,” is on view at the Asia Society in New York through March 25, 2012
