Sarah Sze: 'Timekeeper' Copenhagen Contemporary

Timekeeper

I’ve just come back from spending a few days in Copenhagen and of course there were several very interesting contemporary art exhibitions on; I was particularly interested in the Anslem Kiefer at Copenhagen Contemporary, Julian Rosefeldt’s powerful videos in ‘Works 2001-2016’ at Nikolaj Kunsthal and Klara Kristalova’s narrative ceramics at G L Strand.

All of these exhibitions had aspects to them that could help you think about drawing practice, but the artist that I thought was most accessible to students who are drawing practitioners was Sarah Sze.

Sarah Sze has developed one of the most expansive and stimulating approaches to contemporary fine art drawing practices. I have mentioned her work before and have seen it several times in various locations and her exhibition at Copenhagen Contemporary brought together several strands of her work and illustrated how a contemporary drawing practice can also include sculptural and time based elements.

Detail from Timekeeper

Sarah Sze's 3D installations are clearly linked together by linear relationships and they stem from her interest in drawing. She uses anything to hand to create her complex installations, aspirin, foam, ladders, chairs, plastic spoons, projectors, notepads, broken glass, torn paper, light bulbs, waste bins, thimbles, wire and drinking glasses. You could describe her work as installation but she has pointed out herself that it is actually much closer to drawing. The book of her work, ‘Infinite Line’ quotes Sze as asking questions such as, “How do you make a sculpture that acts like a drawing?’ and “How do you make a drawing that acts like a sculpture?” I suspect that her interest in drawing stems from the fact that she was initially trained as an architect, therefore she will view drawing as plans for 3D realisations. Once again I would point you towards the idea of drawing as ‘disegno’, from the Italian word for both drawing and designing or planning, which carries a complex meaning, involving both the ability to make a drawing and the intellectual capacity to invent a design or concept. Drawing being both a visualisation of a possibility and a rendering of what can be seen.

Gallery view of 'Timekeeper' with projections on walls

In her installation ‘Timekeeper’ she is exploring time as recollection and memory, picking up on the unpredictable nature of time as experienced via objects and images. The installation sits in the centre of a very large dark space. The initial experience of it is as though you have come across an old inventor’s workbench. It is a cluttered, convoluted space and light shoots out at odd intervals as rotating projectors send images around the room. Her trademark linear construction ties everything together, wire and tape meander through a web of torn papers, (often used as small video projection screens), glass bottles, mirrors, chairs, ladders, a bench and lots of office paraphilia such as clips and fixings normally used to put up notices or fasten pieces of paper together. However in this installation it is light that plays the most important part. From light issuing from standard lamps to light being projected from a myriad of small projectors. As you began to look into the mass of objects you are initially slightly confused by the many pieces of broken mirror that are scattered throughout. Mirrors double the space and when embedded into an environment full of different bright light sources will reflect and send out a host of new fragmented light gleams. It’s easier to get an idea from photographs but perhaps even better to see a video of the room. However I couldn’t find one on line, but this link to ‘Measuring Stick’ a video of an installation from 2015 gives an idea of how it looks.

Timekeeper

This is how the piece was described at Copenhagen Contemporary

‘Timekeeper is a complex and immersive installation encompassing projection, light, objects, and sound. In the centre of a darkened room is a dynamic sculptural assemblage of everyday items arranged according to a specific logic: that of a working desk, a site of the studio. Formed, in part, from remnants of the actual editing desk where the work was made, Timekeeper doubles as sculptural installation and as functional tool: a projector of itself. Screens flicker and fade, machines click and whirr, while projected images appear and reappear on the gallery walls and race, cyclically, around the room. This kaleidoscopic encounter echoes the deluge of information we process each day; images and events, at once familiar and strange, coalesce into a suggestion of time as both collapsed and expanded by memory and experience. Here, time does not feel linear; rather, it holds moments that can be revisited over and over again. In this sense, Timekeeper may bear little relationship to the mechanical devices with which we mark the actual passing of time, but instead proposes how information is pieced together as we recall and replay our lives’.

Timekeeper

 See also:

A filmed interview

More thoughts on drawing and time