In slowness there is fullness, 2022
photos by Jacob Koestler
Sara Dittrich: In slowness there is fullness
On view October 21 – December 16
Artist Statement
In slowness there is fullness investigates the radical act of slowness, and how slowness can be used as a device to meditate on the interconnectivity of the body and the land it inhabits. Caring for houseplants, watching the clouds roll by, and spending time in the sun and by the water are just a few examples of how we can use nature to heal our nervous system. The exhibit at The Sculpture Center features an experiential installation which utilizes visitors’ heart rate in real time, as well as video time lapses and cyanotype photographic prints. These works employ time-based processes in order to appreciate the small moments we are otherwise unable to perceive on our own. As we reemerge from the pandemic, I strive to create slowness in these works in order to counter societal norms where speed is valued above all else.
Interdisciplinary sculpture artist Sara Dittrich builds introspective experiences that shift perspective from passive seeing to active looking, from passive hearing to active listening. Using musical thinking, Dittrich illuminates the dynamic and unconscious rhythms of the body and environments. Her art is heard and felt in real time, a feature that Nat Trotman, Curator of Performance and Media at the Guggenheim, called “the liveness” of Dittrich’s work. In her most recent works she seeks to compare rhythms of the human body with rhythms in the landscape, as a method to consider—and place within personal, felt experience—human relationship with the changing climate.
Sara Dittrich (b. Cincinnati, Ohio 1991) is located in Baltimore, Maryland where she has lived and worked since receiving her BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Dittrich continuously informs her work through travel, a practice that began in 2013 when she studied under Dominik Lang at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague. She has also been awarded artist residencies including Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts (2015); the Vermont Studio Center Fellowship (2015); and Sculpture Space (2015). In 2018-2019, she was a Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA. She is the recipient of a 2017 Mary Sawyers Baker Artist Award, and was a 2017 Janet & Walter Sondheim Prize Finalist. Dittrich’s work has been exhibited and performed in numerous venues including the Baltimore Museum of Art, MD; Washington Project for the Arts, DC; and Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts, Grand Rapids, MI.
More about Sara Dittrich here.
