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WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Photos,
videos, objects, sounds,
and light, the myriad stuff,

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both real and virtual, in
our daily lives, it's all
the material for Sarah Sze,

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an artist who takes this
information overload and
gives it a new shape.

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Jeffrey Brown takes a
look for our arts and
culture series, Canvas.

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JEFFREY BROWN: At New York's
Guggenheim Museum right now,

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you can walk around and
into an artwork by Sarah
Sze and be taken by more
than a few surprises.

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Is this your studio ladder?

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SARAH SZE, Artist: I
know. I didn't -- that
wasn't on purpose,

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but I didn't peel it
off. We didn't have time.

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JEFFREY BROWN: Oh, so, studio
ladder, pliers, house plant.

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SARAH SZE: Yes. Yes. Yes.
JEFFREY BROWN: I mean, I
can just go on and on.

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SARAH SZE: Yes. Yes.

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JEFFREY BROWN: But
anything goes, in a sense?

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SARAH SZE: So, anything goes,
but everything is necessary.

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JEFFREY BROWN: In art terms,
these works or installations
or sculptures. More colorfully,

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some have seen an exploded
hardware store or the
contents of an iPhone
spilled out into space,

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all the millions of images in
our lives turned into objects,

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pieces of constructions
that may hold together,
but may break apart.

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SARAH SZE: I like dismantling
the artwork and having it
seep into the architecture,

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the audience seep into
each other. So these
boundaries, these frames,

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they get blurred, because
I think that's the way
we're experiencing life.

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We can walk down the street
and watch a movie. So,
we're looking up at the sky,

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and then we're looking down
and then we're seeing a person.
And so that intersection

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of the way we experience
time, the way we experience
space is changing. And I'm

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interested in how we mark what
is important, what is meaningful
with this new language.

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JEFFREY BROWN: The exhibition
is titled Timelapse.
And, in some works, like
one called Timekeeper,

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the references to marking
time are over, a metronome,
clocks in different cities

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set amid a kind of giant
science experiment of
objects, small projectors,
videos, sounds, lights.

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There's a different way to
experience time in Times Zero,
a large abstract painting,

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and a strange mirror version
of it cut into pieces
and reassembled beneath
the original. Everywhere

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you turn in her work,
images of images, it might
be on our screens, on our
walks, or in our heads.

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SARAH SZE: The number of images
that are around us is -- becomes
-- the volume on that is turned

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so high that the images
that are in our head,
which happen while we're
dreaming, while we're

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imagining what we're
hoping, when I look at
you, I can picture like
seeing you on television.

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That's in my head. So I'm seeing
these images at the same time.
Interior images are being merged

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all the time with
exterior images. So that's
something I'm interested
in people thinking about.

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JEFFREY BROWN: Sze,
now 54, grew up in
Boston, her Chinese-born
father an architect,

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her mother a schoolteacher.
She's received a
MacArthur fellowship,
represented the U.S. at

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the 2013 Venice Biennale,
completed major commissions
in public spaces such as New

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York's La Guardia Airport and
High Line Park, and is exhibited
in museums around the world.

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At the Guggenheim, she's
created site-specific works that
play off and with Frank Lloyd

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Wright's landmark architectural
spiral, the curved bays
where art is exhibited,

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and the sloping ramps that
can disorient viewers.

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SARAH SZE: You can see
actually how off-balance
we are. Usually, things
like this would be covered

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up in the museum, but I wanted
you to really see like this is
the first step to leveling a

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piece. So you can really
understand that even
your body is always at
an angle at this space.

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JEFFREY BROWN: And then,
when you move around -
- and so we see the --
we see the construction.

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SARAH SZE: Exactly. It's not
hidden. Nothing is hidden.

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JEFFREY BROWN: She's also
offered new sight lines
of the spectacular oculus
at the top of the dome,

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and hung a pendulum
that descends to a small
fountain in the atrium.

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And she's filled the space
with everyday objects,
including appliances,

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materials you're more likely
to find at Home Depot or in
your own home than in a museum.

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SARAH SZE: I think of
material as a palette, a
palette of daily life, and...

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JEFFREY BROWN: A
palette of daily life.

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SARAH SZE: I'm interested
in the line being blurred
between what's outside

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the museum and in the
museum. So you start to see
the artistry in the world.

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JEFFREY BROWN: So why do
you like that? I mean,
why are you seeking that?

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SARAH SZE: I think it's
the way we experience
life. There isn't a

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boundary. It isn't framed,
to marry the everyday
experience with the profound.

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So, for me, many things, I'm
interested in having something
very profound happening

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next to something very, very,
very mundane. So you can
look up and see a volcano go,

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and then you can look down
and you can just see a
piece of paint on the floor,

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and that you should shift
between those things,because
I do you think a lot of

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our moments of profundity
or moments of joy come
at times we least expect.

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JEFFREY BROWN: I mean, the
other obvious question is, how
do you know when it's finished?

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SARAH SZE: Right.

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JEFFREY BROWN: How do you
know when you're done?

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SARAH SZE: For me, when it's
done is when it's right at
the edge of feeling like

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it's coming together, but it
could also fall apart. It's
this teetering moment of change.

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We're always in that
moment, right? We're
somewhere in between. We
have -- time is finite

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for us. We know that.
And to highlight, to make
that moment of presence
really powerful as you

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stand in front of something
is, I think -- is, for
me, what -- why I am so
interested in seeing art.

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Artwork is always -- it's a
time traveler. It's a capsule.
It tells us what it means to

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be human both in the
past, in the present, and
potentially what it might
be like in the future.

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JEFFREY BROWN: Sarah Sze's
Timelapse exhibition is
up through September 10.

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For the "PBS NewsHour,"
I'm Jeffrey Brown at the
Guggenheim Museum in New York.