To wrap up from last time on the Guggenheim, Sarah Sze clings to every shred of civilization and her studio. With it, she takes on some of the big boys, in an era of big-box stores and big-box installations. She also makes the results very much her own, at once boisterous and vulnerable, sprawling and intimate. Who knows how long the work took to assemble and whether it will survive?
Is this found art or a life in the making? One could call any of her shows a retrospective, an installation, a preparation for one, or its falling apart, including her latest and messiest yet, through September 10. I work this together with past reports from Chelsea and Asia Society for a longer and fuller review.
Just for starters, where does a piece begin or end? Sze leaves her mark all over the museum. Projections on the façade outside are easy enough to overlook, but not thirty-eight channels’ worth in and around her installation. For once, too, she offers a place to rest, only not for you. A hammock drapes over the fountain in the lobby rotunda. Threads hang loose from every side without every quite falling in.
A second hammock introduces her packed installation on the top floor. It is just as colorful, just as inviting, and just as off limits. Another of her familiar motifs, paint chips, gets a rest there, but rest is the last thing that springs to mind. The curator, Kyung An, dubs the show “Timelapse,” and it is not standing still. You may ascend the ramp past a retrospective of Gego, who did so much to define postwar sculpture and Latin American art. That should prepare you for lines pointing every which way, but nothing like this.
Formally, the show consists of three works, including Timechanger from 2016, but is it a game changer? Surely I had seen all this before—the paint chips and plastic bottles, the tripods and stepladders. Once again, they point to their origins in the artist’s workspace while serving a purpose, as support for projectors and more studio junk. Is it site specific or a window onto her life? 
Sze planned it out by first recreating the museum’s bays in her studio. Imagine if Jackson Pollock tried out his drips on the Guggenheim’s slanted floor.
A text half hidden amid the chaos has a further clue. This is art about “how it was made and how it will fall apart.” It is also decidedly low tech and handmade. The museum calls her meditative, joyful, and elated, but never mind the contradictions. They are what make her art such a delicate construction. It was a long time in coming together, and it may yet fall apart.
Projections add another point of reference—at once more natural and just as artificial. They float above the ramp as clouds and skies. Projections on the floor lead or bar the way into the tower gallery. They give the illusion of pools of water, much like the ones that I had stepped over back outside on a wet spring day. An artist for whom anything goes runs the risk of going nowhere, and an artist who recycles the same props runs the risk of becoming herself. For now, step carefully and wade right in.
Read more, now in a feature-length article on this site.