Documenting Sze’s monumental Guggenheim installation—a reflection on the continual reshaping of experience by digital and material saturation

Over three decades, Sarah Sze has developed a remarkable practice that boldly traverses sculpture, video, installation, painting, printmaking, drawing and sound. Her work, sometimes compared to scientific models, is distinguished by her intricate constructions using myriad ordinary objects and images that evidence the imprints of contemporary life. Sze’s Guggenheim exhibition, which centers on Timekeeper (2016)—one of the first in the artist's eponymous series of multimedia installations—is a reflection on how our experience of time and place is continuously reshaped in a digitally and materially saturated world. The show represents the New York premiere of Timekeeper.
Published after the show’s opening, this book is a rich, immersive document of the singular relationship Sze cultivated with the building over the five years she spent developing this site-specific presentation. The majority of the volume is given over to expansive installation photographs, as well as sketches by the artist. An illustrated essay by curator Kyung An probes the depths of the exhibition’s thread of serendipitous encounters, while contributions by Hilton Als and Molly Nesbit offer explorations of the origins and resonances of Sze’s practice of timekeeping.
Sarah Sze (born 1969) received a BA from Yale University in Connecticut in 1991 and an MFA from New York’s School of Visual Arts in 1997. Her previous monographs include Timekeeper (2018), Night into Day (2021) and Fallen Sky (2022). Born in Boston, Sze presently lives and works in New York.

Text by: Hilton Als, Kyung An, Molly Nesbit