Access a slow-looking exercise related to this work.

Transcript
Marilee Talkington: Fragmented and frayed, this 9-and-a-half-feet-wide by just over 3-feet-tall rectangular mixed-media painting titled "Travelers Among Streams and Cascades" was made in 2023 by Sarah Sze. The work is comprised of subtle vertical collaged elements over layers of print and paint, creating a composition that is abstract yet familiar, hinting at a horizon line separating a vast body of water from the sky.

The painting glistens ice blue and silver from a distance, punctuated with warm yellows and oranges. A full spectrum of color saturation, from deep to soft, runs throughout the painting, perhaps giving an impression of heavier and lighter areas.

This work of layers is built up through oil and acrylic paints, inkjet prints, acrylic polymers, string and ink, aluminum, wood, and paper. Much of the background is a foundation of print and paint: soft washes, long vertical drips, stains, swirling splashes, and bold slashes in shades of gray and blue.

Collaged on top of the backdrop are long vertical stripes torn from an image of a placid body of water reflecting a fiery-orange sunset. The collaged pieces create a vertically striped visual pattern; water, paint, water, paint. The composition has a gentle dip on the left side of the horizon line, which almost fades away as our gaze moves right.

In addition to the collaged images of water, the artist has also included an assortment of other collaged images, including faces, close-up of hands, close-up of fingers, hands molding clay, fingers guiding a pencil as it draws across a page, fire, and a falcon. The artist has collaged images onto the painting’s surface with bright colored tape, creating pink, orange, blue, and green punctuation across the composition.

In addition, stills from projected videos move across the surface of the painting. Compositionally, they float in from the top left and gently curve down to the center of the painting. At the center, some of the video images curve back upward to the top right, but many break rank and branch off into different directions, adding to the subtle but distinct dissidence between the two halves of the painting.

Ver todos los episodios