Sarah Sze: Centrifuge: Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany

For the fifth edition of DER ÖFFENTLICHKEIT — Von den Freunden Haus der Kunst, American artist Sarah Sze will create Centrifuge, a new site-specific installation that will radically transform visitors’ perception and experience of the museum’s Middle Hall (the former Ehrenhalle). Sze’s diverse practice circulates around a range of analytical and spatial concerns, which involve the careful rearrangement of constructed and off-the-shelf objects into a series of sculptural groupings that cut across predetermined perceptual and cognitive categories. Inviting both micro and macro modes of viewing, her delicate constellation of objects, images and sketches deliberately disrupt one definite reading.

Sze has conceived an installation whose spatial agglomerations explode the perceptual field within the Middle Hall. Centrifuge commences from a fixed point and dynamically morphs outwards into the surrounding space; shifting in scale and density as its various components unravels. The series of trajectories created by the scattering concentrations of material across the space create an intimate yet immersive environment informed by a changing sense of gravity, scale and time. At its center, the various objects that encircle the nucleus of the installation will recall subatomic particles morphing and evolving within a quantum field, an implied kinesis, which is counterbalanced by the nature of the sculpture’s overall form; an indeterminacy that in turn mimics the transmutation of cells and organisms within biological life.

As the artist notes, Centrifuge’s “interior sculpture will seem caught in an indeterminable state between growth and decay. As the visitor approaches the sculpture it will immerse them in a micro scale at its interior, while simultaneously gesturing to a macro scale as it projects into the larger space of the hall. The sculpture will function both as a site of action, as well as a projector, illuminating the ceiling and giving the space the openness of a palazzo or city square”.

The work will emphasize the space’s potential as an arena of public interaction and engagement, opening up the building and acting as a magnet to draw viewers from different vectors. Spiraling out into the space with projected light, the installation will activate the surrounding architecture with flickering movement.