Courtesy of Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive, gift of Helen Hesse Charash, 1979. Photograph by Abby Robinson
(from the Press Release..)
The German-born, American artist Eva Hesse (1936–1970) played a central role in the radical transformation of sculptural practice in the 1960s. Hesse belonged to a generation of artists, including Bruce Nauman and Andy Warhol, who expanded the conceptual and technical possibilities for art. BAM/PFA is extremely privileged to present a group of rarely seen sculptures that show the inner workings of Hesse’s studio practice. The objects, both small and large, range from raw material experiments to works in their own right, all of them revealing process and the moments between thinking and making. Organized by The Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh, this unprecedented presentation of Hesse’s small-scale experimental works has traveled to London, Barcelona, and Toronto before its appearance in Berkeley.
Over the course of her career, Hesse produced a range of experimental works that until now have not been recognized as an important subject of research. In the past they have been referred to as test pieces or prototypes, and valued as models or studies for large-scale works. In this exhibition, the art historian Briony Fer reevaluates these works, renaming them “studiowork.” She considers them as “thought-experiments,” works that capture moments of experimentation, where Hesse is trying out ideas and techniques and discovering new possibilities for her sculptural practice. Neither simply preparatory nor necessarily finished works, many of the studioworks exist slightly beneath the threshold of sculpture—but also question what we think sculpture is. They dramatize and draw attention to the open-ended nature of Hesse’s work as a whole.
Eva Hesse: Studiowork features works made from a diverse range of materials, such as plaster and latex, painted wood, metal, sculp-metal (a vinyl and resin suspension of aluminum powder that could be applied over objects), fiberglass, rubber, plasterboard, cardboard, cotton, polyester resin, cheesecloth, wire, string, paper, and nets. This exhibition also includes a series of largely papier mâché works never before shown in public.
Curated by Briony Fer and Barry Rosen
January 26, 2011 – April 10, 2011
RSS
