1 00:00:01,966 --> 00:00:05,000 WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Photos, videos, objects, sounds, and light, the myriad stuff, 2 00:00:07,000 --> 00:00:09,933 both real and virtual, in our daily lives, it's all the material for Sarah Sze, 3 00:00:09,933 --> 00:00:13,800 an artist who takes this information overload and gives it a new shape. 4 00:00:13,800 --> 00:00:17,933 Jeffrey Brown takes a look for our arts and culture series, Canvas. 5 00:00:17,933 --> 00:00:22,366 JEFFREY BROWN: At New York's Guggenheim Museum right now, 6 00:00:22,366 --> 00:00:27,366 you can walk around and into an artwork by Sarah Sze and be taken by more than a few surprises. 7 00:00:29,400 --> 00:00:31,033 Is this your studio ladder? 8 00:00:31,033 --> 00:00:33,000 SARAH SZE, Artist: I know. I didn't -- that wasn't on purpose, 9 00:00:33,000 --> 00:00:34,633 but I didn't peel it off. We didn't have time. 10 00:00:34,633 --> 00:00:38,133 JEFFREY BROWN: Oh, so, studio ladder, pliers, house plant. 11 00:00:38,133 --> 00:00:39,800 SARAH SZE: Yes. Yes. Yes. JEFFREY BROWN: I mean, I can just go on and on. 12 00:00:39,800 --> 00:00:41,233 SARAH SZE: Yes. Yes. 13 00:00:41,233 --> 00:00:42,766 JEFFREY BROWN: But anything goes, in a sense? 14 00:00:42,766 --> 00:00:45,066 SARAH SZE: So, anything goes, but everything is necessary. 15 00:00:45,066 --> 00:00:50,033 JEFFREY BROWN: In art terms, these works or installations or sculptures. More colorfully, 16 00:00:52,566 --> 00:00:55,733 some have seen an exploded hardware store or the contents of an iPhone spilled out into space, 17 00:00:57,233 --> 00:01:00,766 all the millions of images in our lives turned into objects, 18 00:01:00,766 --> 00:01:05,433 pieces of constructions that may hold together, but may break apart. 19 00:01:05,433 --> 00:01:10,433 SARAH SZE: I like dismantling the artwork and having it seep into the architecture, 20 00:01:12,333 --> 00:01:16,366 the audience seep into each other. So these boundaries, these frames, 21 00:01:16,366 --> 00:01:19,666 they get blurred, because I think that's the way we're experiencing life. 22 00:01:21,633 --> 00:01:24,333 We can walk down the street and watch a movie. So, we're looking up at the sky, 23 00:01:24,333 --> 00:01:28,366 and then we're looking down and then we're seeing a person. And so that intersection 24 00:01:30,333 --> 00:01:33,900 of the way we experience time, the way we experience space is changing. And I'm 25 00:01:33,900 --> 00:01:38,900 interested in how we mark what is important, what is meaningful with this new language. 26 00:01:41,200 --> 00:01:44,333 JEFFREY BROWN: The exhibition is titled Timelapse. And, in some works, like one called Timekeeper, 27 00:01:46,366 --> 00:01:50,033 the references to marking time are over, a metronome, clocks in different cities 28 00:01:52,600 --> 00:01:56,100 set amid a kind of giant science experiment of objects, small projectors, videos, sounds, lights. 29 00:01:59,466 --> 00:02:04,433 There's a different way to experience time in Times Zero, a large abstract painting, 30 00:02:06,866 --> 00:02:11,000 and a strange mirror version of it cut into pieces and reassembled beneath the original. Everywhere 31 00:02:13,566 --> 00:02:17,700 you turn in her work, images of images, it might be on our screens, on our walks, or in our heads. 32 00:02:19,766 --> 00:02:24,000 SARAH SZE: The number of images that are around us is -- becomes -- the volume on that is turned 33 00:02:24,000 --> 00:02:27,933 so high that the images that are in our head, which happen while we're dreaming, while we're 34 00:02:27,933 --> 00:02:32,133 imagining what we're hoping, when I look at you, I can picture like seeing you on television. 35 00:02:32,133 --> 00:02:37,133 That's in my head. So I'm seeing these images at the same time. Interior images are being merged 36 00:02:39,633 --> 00:02:42,800 all the time with exterior images. So that's something I'm interested in people thinking about. 37 00:02:44,700 --> 00:02:47,933 JEFFREY BROWN: Sze, now 54, grew up in Boston, her Chinese-born father an architect, 38 00:02:50,266 --> 00:02:53,633 her mother a schoolteacher. She's received a MacArthur fellowship, represented the U.S. at 39 00:02:55,700 --> 00:02:59,466 the 2013 Venice Biennale, completed major commissions in public spaces such as New 40 00:03:01,500 --> 00:03:05,633 York's La Guardia Airport and High Line Park, and is exhibited in museums around the world. 41 00:03:07,533 --> 00:03:11,466 At the Guggenheim, she's created site-specific works that play off and with Frank Lloyd 42 00:03:13,266 --> 00:03:18,133 Wright's landmark architectural spiral, the curved bays where art is exhibited, 43 00:03:19,533 --> 00:03:22,133 and the sloping ramps that can disorient viewers. 44 00:03:22,133 --> 00:03:27,100 SARAH SZE: You can see actually how off-balance we are. Usually, things like this would be covered 45 00:03:29,133 --> 00:03:31,300 up in the museum, but I wanted you to really see like this is the first step to leveling a 46 00:03:31,300 --> 00:03:35,733 piece. So you can really understand that even your body is always at an angle at this space. 47 00:03:35,733 --> 00:03:40,100 JEFFREY BROWN: And then, when you move around - - and so we see the -- we see the construction. 48 00:03:40,100 --> 00:03:43,033 SARAH SZE: Exactly. It's not hidden. Nothing is hidden. 49 00:03:43,033 --> 00:03:48,033 JEFFREY BROWN: She's also offered new sight lines of the spectacular oculus at the top of the dome, 50 00:03:49,633 --> 00:03:53,100 and hung a pendulum that descends to a small fountain in the atrium. 51 00:03:55,066 --> 00:03:57,933 And she's filled the space with everyday objects, including appliances, 52 00:03:57,933 --> 00:04:02,900 materials you're more likely to find at Home Depot or in your own home than in a museum. 53 00:04:04,733 --> 00:04:08,866 SARAH SZE: I think of material as a palette, a palette of daily life, and... 54 00:04:09,966 --> 00:04:12,033 JEFFREY BROWN: A palette of daily life. 55 00:04:12,033 --> 00:04:14,866 SARAH SZE: I'm interested in the line being blurred between what's outside 56 00:04:14,866 --> 00:04:19,100 the museum and in the museum. So you start to see the artistry in the world. 57 00:04:19,100 --> 00:04:21,633 JEFFREY BROWN: So why do you like that? I mean, why are you seeking that? 58 00:04:21,633 --> 00:04:24,466 SARAH SZE: I think it's the way we experience life. There isn't a 59 00:04:24,466 --> 00:04:29,466 boundary. It isn't framed, to marry the everyday experience with the profound. 60 00:04:31,400 --> 00:04:34,566 So, for me, many things, I'm interested in having something very profound happening 61 00:04:36,533 --> 00:04:39,733 next to something very, very, very mundane. So you can look up and see a volcano go, 62 00:04:42,166 --> 00:04:45,400 and then you can look down and you can just see a piece of paint on the floor, 63 00:04:45,400 --> 00:04:49,500 and that you should shift between those things,because I do you think a lot of 64 00:04:49,500 --> 00:04:54,500 our moments of profundity or moments of joy come at times we least expect. 65 00:04:56,433 --> 00:04:58,833 JEFFREY BROWN: I mean, the other obvious question is, how do you know when it's finished? 66 00:04:58,833 --> 00:05:00,366 SARAH SZE: Right. 67 00:05:00,366 --> 00:05:02,400 JEFFREY BROWN: How do you know when you're done? 68 00:05:02,400 --> 00:05:05,433 SARAH SZE: For me, when it's done is when it's right at the edge of feeling like 69 00:05:05,433 --> 00:05:10,200 it's coming together, but it could also fall apart. It's this teetering moment of change. 70 00:05:10,200 --> 00:05:15,100 We're always in that moment, right? We're somewhere in between. We have -- time is finite 71 00:05:15,100 --> 00:05:20,100 for us. We know that. And to highlight, to make that moment of presence really powerful as you 72 00:05:22,566 --> 00:05:27,533 stand in front of something is, I think -- is, for me, what -- why I am so interested in seeing art. 73 00:05:29,700 --> 00:05:34,066 Artwork is always -- it's a time traveler. It's a capsule. It tells us what it means to 74 00:05:34,066 --> 00:05:39,066 be human both in the past, in the present, and potentially what it might be like in the future. 75 00:05:41,066 --> 00:05:43,833 JEFFREY BROWN: Sarah Sze's Timelapse exhibition is up through September 10. 76 00:05:43,833 --> 00:05:48,833 For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Jeffrey Brown at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.