The Easel

19th May 2020

Sarah Sze: The Importance of Impossible Ideas

A bit cerebral, but interesting too. Sze calls herself a sculptor but uses multiple media in her vast, elaborate installations. In many of them she juxtaposes physical objects and digital images to explore how images impact our perceptions of the physical world. “What the digital does in many ways … is it creates a kind of longing. That is very much how the web operates: around a

Midcentury artist Lenore Tawney offered a radical vision of what weaving could be

In weaving, the grid of warp and weft threads literally holds everything together. Quotidian items like placemats show how this structure can limit the final form. Lenore Tawney had grander ambitions. Technical ingenuity, artistic innovation and her “singular devotion” led to “woven forms” that redefined the limits of weaving. Some “looser, more expressive” works resemble abstract paintings; others “trespass into the realm of sculpture”.