Since the late 1990s, Sze has created intricate assemblages of everyday objects that blur the boundaries between painting, sculpture, and architecture. In the last five years, she has reintroduced video into her work to explore the growing influx of images in our daily lives and examine how their proliferation has fundamentally changed our relationship to objects, time, and memory.

The production of Tracing Fallen Sky for the artist's second solo show at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain ('Night into Day', 24 October 2020 - 25 April 2021) started in January 2019, when Pedro Mirò digitised the hand-carved terracotta maquette of the sculpture in Sarah Sze's studio in New York, recording it using photogrammetry. The data was then used to create a 3D model of the sculpture, that could be scaled according to necessity - in this case, to measure 205 x 80 x 78 cm.

The 115 individual pieces composing the sculpture were cast in stainless steel at Fademesa Foundry from the 3D-printed models created at Factum Arte, paying special attention to the top of the piece: the perfectly-polished surface was achieved by welding a custom-bent curve sheet of metal on top of the cast base, seamlessy joining the two surfaces together. 

[...] Circling the circumference of the building, the artwork leads to a second space where instead of looking up into a carved out sphere, visitors look down into a mirrored, concave, fragmented structure. Like a bowl of reflective water, the sculpture’s steel surfaces reflect slivers of surrounding images and objects – producing an unsettling and fractured landscape of shards and pieces, glimpses and refractions.
— from the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain

Render of the 3D model © Factum Arte

Detail of the 3D render of the terracotta maquette © Factum Arte

Detail of the 3D render of the terracotta maquette © Factum Arte

On 19 October 2020, a tour of the exhibition was livestreamed on social media, with French philosopher Bruno Latour joining the artist in a promenade-conversation around the installations. Although Fondation Cartier was closed on 29 October due to COVID-19 restrictions, this insightful conversation was a great opportunity to enjoy the exhibition in virtual form.