Sarah Sze: Night Into Day - (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

"A meditation on what life has been like for millions of us in 2020: a world broken into fragments that we're still trying to piece together." -The Guardian

American artist Sarah Sze (born 1969) exhibited her first solo show at the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain at the turn of the millennium; two decades later, she returns to the exhibition spaces of Jean Nouvel's iconic building in the midst of a similarly contentious global environment with two new sculptures specially created for the occasion.

These pieces explore how the contemporary proliferation of images--via print and pixel, from deep space to the deep web--fundamentally changes our relationship to time, memory and the physical presence of objects. This catalog, boasting 48 different covers, was designed in close collaboration with the artist and details the execution of Sze's installation. An essay by philosopher Bruno Latour, a conversation between Sze and Jean Nouvel, and an essay by exhibition curator Leanne Sacramone provide further insight into the process behind this work and Sze's artistic philosophy.

Review Quotes

Astonishing and somewhat perplexing visions ... A meditation on what life has been like for millions of us in 2020: a world broken into fragments that we're still trying to piece together.--Andrew Dickson "The Guardian"

Expansive, dizzying, serious but sometimes funny, fractured but propulsive, and explosive with ideas.--Nick Compton "Wallpaper*"

Sze transforms the minutia of daily life--objects like bottle caps, string, color photographs, electric fans, fake rocks and live plants, along with paintings, videos and projections--into alternative worlds that careen between the micro and macrocosmic, creating fantastical environments.--Eleanor Heartney "Art Press"

Sze's two installations--"Twice Twilight", a planetarium staged in darkness, and "Tracing Fallen Sky", a pool-like structure under a swinging pendulum--examine shifts in time and space. Indeed, both works, collectively called 'Night Into Day', were envisioned and predominantly made during quarantine, intending to reflect the thought patterns many faced during months in lockdown.--Barry Samaha "Harper's Bazaar"

With two monumental assemblages, the American sculptor probes how an over-proliferation of images changes our relationships with objects, time, and memory.--Ryan Waddups "Surface"

Sarah Sze has a gift for making cosmic subjects seem down to earth.--Andrea K. Scott "New Yorker"