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evahesse.com




http://www.evahesse.com


Shortly before her death, Eva Hesse described her subject as ‘the total absurdity of life’. Indeed, one of the chief characteristics of her work is a vein of subtle humour that runs from the self-deprecating, abject quality of her early self-portraits to the quirky fetishism and playful repetitions of her later sculpture.

She continually experimented with new processes and materials, which included the use of string, resin and latex, in order to push the boundaries of art, moving beyond definitions of figuration or abstraction. Combining both rigidity and pliability, the machine-made and the hand-crafted, hard geometric abstraction and soft organic curves, her work refuses to be categorised. As Hesse herself commented: "The drawings could be called paintings legitimately, and a lot of my sculpture could be called paintings, and a lot of it could be called nothing - a thing or any object or any new word that you want to give it."

She explored ideas such as transience, chance, and difference in her “grid” as well as in her “circle” drawings, which she made with a compass and graded in shades of white, black, and gray. In sculptures such as Ingeminate, Hesse repeated the circular motion using cord, materializing the line to evoke the body but also to explore the physical qualities of the medium.

from: http://www.tate.org.uk

Labels: arte