Shirley Tse

Waiting at the place where America parts Eurasia. Iceland, 2004.

I went to SFAI to hear this lecture on November 12th. Tse is originally from Hong Kong and currently based in L.A. and works primarily as a sculptor and installation artist. One of the most interesting points she made was that she thinks of her materials as a huge part of her work. As she shifts and uses new material to create her pieces they say as much if not more about her work than the representational subject that she is trying to convey. She works mainly with plastic, Styrofoam and other man-made substances and it is their synthetic value that really informs her work as she juxtaposes it in natural landscapes. Her sculptures are also temporal, she'll use them for one show or a series of photographs and then discard them. Yet because her materials are ubiquitous, everywhere and they'll last forever, it brings into question the ethics of using materials that are indestructible and yet so damaging for the environment. I found it fascinating that she has done intense research about the history of plastic, its origination, use and place within our society. How she negiotiates precision and awareness in her work between the machine she uses to sculpt with, the form, the material and her hand is really something that I've taken away from this lecture, as well as applying background knowledge to inform one's conceptual work.