Gagosian is opening Sarah Sze’s new exhibition, Pictures at an Exhibition, on June 25, 2024. This exhibition marks Sze’s return to Paris after her 2020 show at the same gallery, coinciding with her acclaimed solo exhibition Night into Day at Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain.
Following its debut at the Thailand Biennale in Chiang Rai, Sze’s immersive video installation, Pictures at an Exhibition (2023), takes over the gallery’s entire ground floor. This dynamic piece features a multitude of paper screens animated with images, video, and light, forming an illuminated core reminiscent of a room-sized kaleidoscope. The projections extend beyond the screens, casting flickering remnants of light across the gallery’s floors and walls.
Named after Modest Mussorgsky’s 1874 piano suite, Sze’s installation parallels the composition’s interpretative movements of paintings. It bridges various media and perceptions, juxtaposing natural imagery with abstract forms. Through rapid transitions between fragments and cohesive images, the installation forms constellations of fleeting moments that reflect the nature of digital representation and its impact on perception, memory, and desire.
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Accompanying the installation, Sze presents a new series of paintings that extend her signature visual language throughout the gallery, including interstitial spaces and an exterior-facing vitrine. Combining acrylic and oil with layers of photographic prints, Sze creates disorienting gestural compositions that blur the lines between digital and analog, tactile and immaterial, and physical and imagined.
Born in Boston in 1969 and based in New York, Sarah Sze’s work is included in prestigious collections such as the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Tate, and the Museum of Modern Art. Her notable exhibitions include the United States Pavilion at the 55th Biennale di Venezia, Timekeeper at the Rose Art Museum, and Timelapse at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Sze has also created significant permanent commissions, including installations at New York’s Second Avenue Subway and LaGuardia Airport, and the Storm King Art Center.
