United States of America Pavilion – 55th Biennale di Venezia. June 1st – November 24th 2013
U.S. Pavilion at 55th International Art Exhibition - la Biennale di Venezia, to Feature Five New Installations by Sarah Sze Presented by Bronx Museum
Bronx, NY – March 28, 2013 - The Bronx Museum of the Arts, in cooperation with the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, will present Sarah Sze: Triple Point at the United States Pavilion at the 55th International Art Exhibition, la Biennale di Venezia, on view from June 1 through November 24, 2013. Known for her large-scale gravity- defying sculptures, artist Sarah Sze will create an elaborate sequence of five new installations that will transform the U.S. Pavilion from a set of discrete galleries into an all-encompassing environment that extends beyond the building.
U.S. representation at this global event ensures that the excellence, vitality, and diversity of the arts in the United States are effectively showcased abroad and provides an opportunity to engage foreign audiences to increase mutual understanding.
Sarah Sze has captivated audiences with her minutely detailed accumulative installations which employ myriad commonplace objects—from water bottles to ladders, light bulbs and electric fans—to penetrate walls, suspend from ceilings, burrow into the ground and span entire buildings. Sze’s work exists at the intersection of sculpture, drawing and architecture, where her exploration of space is coupled with an ability to transform existing structures into intimate landscapes.
Triple Point will inhabit the 1930 Pavilion designed by architects William Adams Delano and Chester Holmes Aldrich, weaving through the spaces, coalescing and dispersing at different points along the way. Sze will approach the Pavilion as a site of live observation, allowing the work to evolve in Venice and evoking events still shifting and unfolding. Triple Point will offer viewers the opportunity to carefully consider every shift in scale between the humble and the monumental, the throwaway and the precious, the incidental and the essential.
“Sze’s ability to completely transform any space into an unexpected visual and sensory experience has unparalleled potential to animate the U.S. Pavilion,” said Holly Block, a Co- Commissioner of the U.S. Pavilion, and The Bronx Museum of the Arts’ Executive Director. “Triple Point will be unlike anything visitors have ever seen in the U.S. Pavilion or the Biennale.”
“Sze’s installations, which are being created specifically for Venice, play with shifts of scale and the spectators’ sense of orientation and disorientation,” adds Co-Commissioner Carey Lovelace, a critic and independent curator. “Visitors will experience both the poetry of her work and the physical structure of the Pavilion in an entirely new way.”
As an extension of its Biennale participation, The Bronx Museum of the Arts is developing public and education outreach programs that engage with the themes of Sze’s Pavilioninstallations. These include a teen exchange between high school students in the Bronx and Venice; workshops with the Università IUAV di Venezia, a leading art and design university; an extensive digital platform; and “Venice Conversations,” a series of interactive discussions featuring artists, scientists, and scholars from around the world in association with Bloomberg.
A fully illustrated publication documenting Sze’s installations will be co-published by The Bronx Museum and Gregory R. Miller. Designed by Takaaki Matsumoto, and featuring comprehensive photography taken on site, it will include essays by Pavilion Co-Commissioners Holly Block and Carey Lovelace and by curator Johanna Burton, as well as a conversation between Sze and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jennifer Egan, and an original text by Egan, “Black Box.”
Sarah Sze: Triple Point, the official U.S. representation at the 55th International Art Exhibition - la Biennale di Venezia, is organized by The Bronx Museum of the Arts and is managed and supported by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. The exhibition is produced with the collaboration of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice (Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York). Lead foundation support has been provided by the Ford Foundation, with additional support from JL Foundation, Charina Endowment Fund, Bobbie Foshay, Agnes Gund, The O’Grady Foundation, Laura M. Tisch Illumination Fund, Gwen and Peter Norton, The Isambard Kingdom Brunel Society of North America, Cynthia Sears and Frank Buxton, Nancy and Stanley Singer, Martin and Rebecca Eisenberg, The Ahmanson Foundation, The Broad Art Foundation, Stefan Edlis and Gael Neeson, Charlotte and William Ford, Suzanne and David Johnson, Melissa and Robert Soros, Toby D. Lewis Philanthropic Fund, Words of the World Fund, Jennifer McSweeney, Sue and Joseph Berland, Columbia University School of the Arts, and Alison and John Ferring, among others. Special support of digital engagement and education programs is provided by Bloomberg.
