Opening October 18, 2026, through April 4, 2027, Sarasota Art Museum of Ringling College of Art and Design (SAM) will feature one of its own Fine Arts faculty, Hungarian artist Eszter Sziksz. Visitors to SAM will find themselves enveloped in a forest of translucent ribbons, each whispering silent questions from the ceiling. This is the world of Seeking, I Don’t Know What I’m Looking For (And I Hope I Never Find It), Sziksz’s first solo museum exhibition.
Curated by Lacie Barbour, curator of modern and contemporary art for Sarasota Art Museum, the exhibition centers on an immersive environment that invites visitors to navigate a space built on philosophical inquiry. As part of both her personal and teaching practice at Ringling College, Sziksz brings a deep expertise in printmaking and installation to this site-specific work, and encourages the viewer to search for meaning rather than definitive answers.
The second floor of the Museum will be transformed by dozens of delicate wax paper ribbons. Using a technique known as inkless embossing, Sziksz has pressed blind-stamped philosophical questions from thinkers like Plato, Albert Camus, and Martin Heidegger into the base of each strand. To read these hidden messages, visitors must use magnifying glasses provided in the gallery, engaging in a slow, intentional interaction with the art. The experience is further heightened by Let Them Twist in the Wind, a soundscape by multimedia artist Douglas Tewksbury that adds a layer of sonic immersion to the drifting paper.
The roots of Seeking are deeply personal, born from a period of uncertainty following a friend’s cancer diagnosis. This moment led Sziksz to investigate how we find value in the midst of change. “The project grew out of a personal need to search for meaning rather than answers,” she explains. By stripping away ink, the artist allows the audience’s curiosity to fulfill the work.
About the artist
Eszter Sziksz is an internationally recognized artist whose practice spans Europe, Asia, and the United States. Her work often utilizes printmaking, sculpture, and video to explore themes of memory and human connection. Following her participation in the Skyway 2024 exhibition at Sarasota Art Museum, she was recently awarded a Fulbright U.S. Scholarship. Her upcoming projects include a feature in Human/Nature: Envisioning the Environment at the Castellani Art Museum. Through her interactive installations at Ringling College and beyond, Sziksz continues to invite audiences into shared experiences that unfold through physical interaction.
