Notepad
2008

In her objects and installations, Sarah Sze has incorporated, (among hundreds of other items), toothpicks, aspirin tablets, plastic utensils, candy, and matchsticks. She transforms these most pedestrian of materials into complex, imaginative, three-dimensional arrangements both large and small. This sculpture is formed out of what looks to be an ordinary legal notepad tacked to the wall. Several of its pages are unfurled, spooling upward and outward, and dozens of rows of rectangular apertures have been meticulously incised and cut out of it. Notepad is a self-contained structure, but it also evokes other devices and constructions: its upper region resembles an abacus, while the lower configuration looks like a building surrounded by catwalks and fire escapes. The sculpture succinctly embodies the paradox at the heart of Sze’s works: they are intimately linked to the real world—and yet are also distinct, self-sufficient environments unto themselves.