Sarah McKenzie: Interim

Dan Beachy-Quick, Artforum

"McKenzie gives us the museum in its candid moments, the transience between open hours and installations, empty of others and, perhaps most poignantly, of ourselves. Here is a paradox that nears impossibility, the very germ of the artist’s vision: What is this space minus us, when it’s allowed to be nothing more than its own vitality? Such a notion could be arid, but it’s not. The hyperrealist facture of McKenzie’s image subsides into subtle moments of pure abstraction: The polished floors reflect and elongate the patterns of windows, doorways, paintings; the nonobjective is at play in the off-hours of public architecture. Even the air itself becomes a presence."

 

 

Read on Artforum
February 1, 2022