"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.”
- Eva Hesse,
1969
No title, 1969
Cheesecloth, adhesive
43.7 x 28.5 x 11.5 cm / 17 1/4 x 11 1/4 x 4 1/2 in
16 March – 24 April 2010, Hauser & Wirth New York
"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 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 and raises important questions about traditional notions of what constitutes sculpture."
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"Life doesn’t last;
art doesn’t last "
-Eva Hesse