Access a slow-looking exercise related to this work.

Transcript
Marilee Talkington: In "Times Zero," from 2023 by Sarah Sze, a painting and printed photograph are positioned nearly perpendicular to one another like two halves of an open book. The painting is presented vertically on the gallery wall, and the photograph is laid almost horizontally, resting on a low platform only a few inches below the painting. Each piece is ten feet long horizontally, and eight feet in its other dimension.

The mixed-media painting on the wall is made up of silvery-blue tones that swirl in a circular formation, merging and contrasting with opposing swirling sections of warm, glowing orange tones and incandescent rainbows. It evokes a radiating series of ripples in a still body of water after a single droplet falls onto its surface.

The work is constructed with collaged, torn images that include a fiery-orange sunset filling a blue sky and reflecting on placid silver water, a ball of fire in a basin, and hands with warm-brown skin tones. The images are ripped into curves that radiate outward from the center, creating the swirling effect.

Multicolored paint is dripped vertically throughout the composition, over and under the collaged elements, complicating the rhythmic movement of the piece.

The second lower image is approximately the same size and composition, a mirror image of the painting above. However, on close inspection, the work on the bottom is a slightly less vibrant inkjet-printed version of the painting above that has been torn to into pieces. Where the print has been torn away, the bare platform on which it rests peeks through the holes. The low platform gently slopes downward toward the floor as it moves away from the wall, and the torn fragments seem to spill over the edge toward the viewer, perhaps like ice breaking up on a frozen lake and tipping down a small waterfall.

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