Eva Hesse, the German American artist, wanted her work to look “ucky,” and accordingly, many of her sculptures can make your skin crawl.
They behave like skin themselves: irregular in texture, their craggy folds suggesting, unnervingly, something alive.
Hesse, a post-Minimalist of the 1960s (she died in 1970), dismantled the ideological scaffolding holding up what was considered art, often by reimagining industrial, non-art materials.
They spread across the floor and crept up walls, unruly and impolite, like little else art had seen before.
They’re given ample breathing room across the gallery’s ground floor, cool and low-lit, which gives a revenant, sepulchral flavor.
Persons:
Eva Hesse, Hesse, ” Hesse, Hauser
Organizations:
Hauser & Wirth, Guggenheim, MoMA, Wexner Center, Arts, Ohio State University, University of California, Berkeley Art, Wirth’s, Pompidou Center
Locations:
German American, Hesse, Manhattan, Maryland, Paris