Sarah Sze Afterimage, Screen with Blue Brush Stroke (Painting in its Archive) 2018

    Oil paint, acrylic paint, archival paper, UV stabilizers, adhesive, tape, ink and acrylic polymers, shellac and water based primer on wood
    Panel size: 30.5 x 45.5 x 6 cm
    (12 1/8 x 17 7/8 x 2 3/8 in)
    Including archive: 179 x 279 x 6 cm
    (70 1/2 x 109 7/8 x 2 3/8 in)

    This work is from Sarah Sze’s ongoing project, Afterimage, which explores how images function as tools to make sense of the world. Comprised of multiple layers of paint, ink, paper, pencil, prints, objects, and wood, this body of work both re-frames and refracts the collision of images we are confronted with daily. The title, referring to the effect where an image continues to appear in our vision after exposure to the original image has ceased, also alludes to the filmic idea of the persistence of vision, where the afterimage fills in the gaps between film frames, setting still images into motion in our perception and memory. Traces of multiple image-making mediums are layered in the works, such as the ghost images of etching, the skidding surface of silkscreen printing, the layering cuts of collage, the dripping and brushing of paint, the exposure by light of photographs, the digital disturbance of computer processing, and the flickering movement of film. While the painting stands on its own, when installed within its archive, the constellations of images shift in scale, fade, disappear, re-emerge, creating a storyboard of how an image is burned into memory and persists over time.

    Born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1969, Sarah Sze lives and works in New York. Sze represented the United States at the Venice Biennale in 2013, and was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2003. Current and recent major solo exhibitions include Night into Day at the Fondation Cartier, Paris (until 25 April 2021). Centrifuge, a major commission by Haus der Kunst, Munich, was installed in the museum’s Middle Hall in 2018. The artist has exhibited in museums worldwide, and her works are held in the permanent collections of prominent institutions, including Tate, London; M+ Museum, Hong Kong; MUDAM, Luxembourg; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Sze has also created public works for the High Line in New York and the city’s Second Avenue Subway Station. A major installation created for the new Terminal B at LaGuardia Airport, New York, opened in June 2020.

     


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