Off view
American, b. 1969
Fifth Season, 2021
Mixed media, oil paint, acrylic paint, ink, canvas, projectors, plants, clay, archival paper, aluminum, plastic, wood, water, lights, fan, string, video, photographs, dirt, metal mirrors, stones
Courtesy the artist
To accompany her new outdoor commission at Storm King, Fallen Sky, artist Sarah Sze has created an immersive installation, running fifty feet in length and specifically designed to create a portal through the gallery that houses it. The work, Fifth Season, considers landscape as a timeless preoccupation of artists. While the installation is collaged with natural elements and events, it refuses the impulse to present the natural world as comforting, coherent, or certain. Here, the landscape appears to be fragile and in flux, reflective of the constant disorientation and reorientation one feels in nature—shifting between vast physical surroundings and small, individual moments of meaning.
Light and shadow process across painted surfaces in filmic sequences. Fused images, photographs, and projections evoke the varied kinds of interior landscapes we can access through our own memories, imaginations, impressions, or conjectures.
Sze’s epic panorama gives a fractal view of nature and its beauty—reflecting our current awareness of climate change, and an era in which nature’s existence for human enjoyment and consumption is no longer something that can be taken for granted. Both Fallen Sky and Fifth Season represent entropic forces in the landscape, calling on us to reflect on the relationship of the human figure to nature—and the presumed human ability to control it.
The Sarah Sze: Fallen Sky commission and exhibition are made possible by generous major support from Janet Benton and David Schunter, Gagosian, Girlfriend Fund, Agnes Gund, the Hazen Polsky Foundation, the Ohnell Family Foundation, Thomas A. and Georgina T. Russo, and VIA Art Fund.
Lead support is provided by Anonymous (2), Roberta and Steven Denning, the Ohnell Charitable Lead Trust, Samuel Freeman Charitable Trust, the Speyer Family Foundation Inc., Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, and Victoria Miro.
Support is also provided by Debra and Leon Black, Blavatnik Family Foundation, Charlotte Feng Ford, Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund, the Lostand Foundation, Mr. and Mrs. Malcolm Nolen, The Peter Stern Fund for Publications, the Robert Lehman Foundation, and the Sidney E. Frank Foundation. This project is also funded, in part, by Anonymous (2), Ann Ames, Deeda Blair, Jocelyne and David A. DeNunzio, Hugh J. Freund and Sandra Wijnberg, The Helis Foundation, Jill and Peter Kraus, Debby and Rocco Landesman, Miyoung Lee and Neil Simpkins, Beverly and Peter Lipman, Loren Pack & Rob Beyer, Richard and Lisa Perry, Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin M. Rosen, Carol and Lawrence Saper, Hume R. Steyer and Nanahya C. Santana, Seran and Ravi Trehan, Marica and Jan Vilcek, and Caryl Yanow and Bill Grueskin.
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Additional lead support provided by Market New York through I LOVE NY/ New York State’s Division of Tourism as a part of the Regional Economic Development Council awards.
®I LOVE NY is a registered trademark and service mark of the New York State Department of Economic Development; used with permission
Light and shadow process across painted surfaces in filmic sequences. Fused images, photographs, and projections evoke the varied kinds of interior landscapes we can access through our own memories, imaginations, impressions, or conjectures.
Sze’s epic panorama gives a fractal view of nature and its beauty—reflecting our current awareness of climate change, and an era in which nature’s existence for human enjoyment and consumption is no longer something that can be taken for granted. Both Fallen Sky and Fifth Season represent entropic forces in the landscape, calling on us to reflect on the relationship of the human figure to nature—and the presumed human ability to control it.
The Sarah Sze: Fallen Sky commission and exhibition are made possible by generous major support from Janet Benton and David Schunter, Gagosian, Girlfriend Fund, Agnes Gund, the Hazen Polsky Foundation, the Ohnell Family Foundation, Thomas A. and Georgina T. Russo, and VIA Art Fund.
Lead support is provided by Anonymous (2), Roberta and Steven Denning, the Ohnell Charitable Lead Trust, Samuel Freeman Charitable Trust, the Speyer Family Foundation Inc., Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, and Victoria Miro.
Support is also provided by Debra and Leon Black, Blavatnik Family Foundation, Charlotte Feng Ford, Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund, the Lostand Foundation, Mr. and Mrs. Malcolm Nolen, The Peter Stern Fund for Publications, the Robert Lehman Foundation, and the Sidney E. Frank Foundation. This project is also funded, in part, by Anonymous (2), Ann Ames, Deeda Blair, Jocelyne and David A. DeNunzio, Hugh J. Freund and Sandra Wijnberg, The Helis Foundation, Jill and Peter Kraus, Debby and Rocco Landesman, Miyoung Lee and Neil Simpkins, Beverly and Peter Lipman, Loren Pack & Rob Beyer, Richard and Lisa Perry, Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin M. Rosen, Carol and Lawrence Saper, Hume R. Steyer and Nanahya C. Santana, Seran and Ravi Trehan, Marica and Jan Vilcek, and Caryl Yanow and Bill Grueskin.
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Additional lead support provided by Market New York through I LOVE NY/ New York State’s Division of Tourism as a part of the Regional Economic Development Council awards.
®I LOVE NY is a registered trademark and service mark of the New York State Department of Economic Development; used with permission