New York, NY... In 1969, one year before her death at the age of 34, German-born American artist Eva Hesse wrote
of her desire "to get to non-art, non-connotive, non-anthropomorphic, non-geometric, non-nothing; everything...It's
not the new, it is what is yet not known, thought, seen, to... Read more
New York, NY… In 1969, one year before her death at the age of 34, German-born American artist Eva Hesse wrote
of her desire “to get to non-art, non-connotive, non-anthropomorphic, non-geometric, non-nothing; everything…It’s
not the new, it is what is yet not known, thought, seen, touched; but really what is not and that is.” In her effort to
make works that could transcend literal associations, Hesse cultivated mistakes and surprise, precariousness and
enigma. The objects she produced, at once humble and enormously charismatic, came to play a central role in the
transformation of contemporary art practice.
On March 16, Hauser & Wirth New York will open an
exhibition of such objects: ‘EVA HESSE’ brings together
fourteen works, many never before shown publicly in
the United States, that previously have been considered
improvisational ‘test pieces’ or prototypes for larger
sculptures. Of these, eleven are delicate papier caché
forms – wisps of assembled paper, tape, cheesecloth
and adhesive made between 1966 and 1969 – that are
neither round nor rectangular, but indeterminate. Intimate
manifestations of the artist’s thought process, they
evoke the bodily, suggesting fragments of skull, sheaths
of timeworn parchment, tablets awaiting manuscript,
curving shadows, the lens of an eyeball. These objects
evade easy definition: They have been seen variously
as experiments, little pieces, molds, tests for larger
works, or finished works in their own right. In her recent
and raises important questions about traditional
notions of what constitutes sculpture. research on Hesse’s work, prominent British art historian Briony Fer has renamed these objects collectively as
‘studioworks,’ proposing that their precarious nature places them at the very heart of Hesse’s influential practice
‘EVA HESSE’ will present its contents upon a plinth
that loosely alludes to how these works may have
been encountered in Hesse’s studio, temporarily
arranged in groups on the artist’s work table, always
subject to change. The objects in this exhibition
will be included in the museum survey ‘Eva Hesse:
Studioworks’ at Fundació Antoni Tapies in Barcelona
(May 14 – August 1, 2010), the Art Gallery of Ontario
in Toronto (September 10, 2010 – January 2, 2011), and the Berkeley Art Museum in California (January 26 –
April 24, 2011).
In New York in the 1960s, Hesse was among a group of
artists, including Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, Richard
Serra and Robert Smithson, who engaged materials that
were originally soft and flexible: aluminum, latex rubber,
plastic, lead, polythene, copper, felt, chicken-wire, dirt,
sawdust, paper pulp and glue. Often unstable, these
elements yielded works forever alive in their relativity
and mutability. Hesse was aware she produced objects
that were ephemeral, but this problem was of less
concern to her than the desire to exploit materials with a
temporal dimension. Much of the tumescent, life-affirming power of Hesse’s art derives from this confident embrace
of moment. As she stated in an interview with Cindy Nemser in 1970, “Life doesn’t last; art doesn’t last.”
