Sarah Sze’s permanent site-specific commission for Storm King, Fallen Sky, takes the form of a partially eroded concave mirror nestled in the grasses of a south-facing hillside. Composed of 132 elements in highly polished, cast stainless steel, the broad, shimmering surface of the sculpture allows it to be seen both up close and from far across Storm King’s rolling fields, reflecting the ways in which Sze harnesses minute and immense aspects of our world in equal measure.

Fallen Sky collapses the horizon line by pulling the earth and air toward each other. Instead of marking the landscape, the work visually merges with it, embedded in and reflecting its surroundings. Fallen Sky allows viewers to simultaneously experience the land around the work and what is happening above—passing clouds or birds and infinite variations in light, weather, the seasons, and even the time of day. Sze, an artist who often works in video and time-based media, has described the ever-changing installation as “filmic” because of its dynamic nature and depiction of “how the landscape behaves.”

Sze created the clay model for Fallen Sky through a process of erosion; the resulting work appears as a ruin, frozen in a state of partial deterioration. For Sze, the sculpture “teeters between two extremes,” exploring the tension between material permanence and ephemerality. Fallen Sky conveys a sense of entropy, suggesting that the earth is a place both fragile and in flux.