Art Hag

New York-based artist Sarah Sze is exhibiting her first gallery show in New York in over five years at the Tanya Banakdar Gallery - and boy is it a doozy. Sze filled up the gallery's two floors with several large-scale, intricate, detailed installations. Taking everyday items like lamps, milk cartons, cans, water bottles, ladders, and fans and mixing them with hand-crafted objects including bugs, fish, shoes, cinder blocks and much, much more, she "creates atmospheres, suggesting both familiarity and alienation, in which objects share our space while also occupying another dimension" (from the press release). "Time, movement and navigation are key to the experience of Sze's work and the exhibition as a whole." You could spend hours studying one of her larger installations and still not absorb all it has to show and offer. Aside from the physical artifacts on display, Sze also creates "internal movement" by "reflecting and projecting light" with water, a disco ball, and overhead projectors, and strategically positioning oscillating fans to cause breezy movement.

The most ambitious of the works on view is The Uncountables (Encyclopedia), displaying hundreds of objects on tilting shelves, angled boards, and skewed planks, brightly lit by desk lamps, creating a "sense of disorientation." While the industrial shelving initially looks sturdy, as you weave your way around the installation you begin to wonder if they'll collapse - come crashing down with all their contents. The work feels a like a cross between a science lab and a fun-house.

WIth lots of everyday objects and even more carefully crafted items, Sze meticulously and painstakingly creates unique and complex environments that are definitely worth exploring. Learn more at Tanyabonakdargallery.com. Through October 23rd.

The Uncountables (Encyclopedia), 2010