Eva Hesse
I
have to be strict with myself. I want to say “fluency” or “ecstatic
grammars” but I try not to be swayed by fiberglass, cylindric columns
inflating and deflating, iron mesh that trails cords and petals across
the floor. Resin, vellum, wax—they are translucent, skin-like. In
sunlight, the sculptures warm and glow. They take on the look of light
penetrating the thinner parts of our bodies, ears or hands. She conjures
life and it is formal. “That’s why I think I might be so good,” she
says. “I have no fear. I take risks. I have the most openness about my
art. My attitude is most open. It is total freedom and the will to
work.” Eva Hesse had a stepmother named Eva Hesse who had a brain tumor
two years before Eva. She got out of the hospital two years to the day
Eva went in. The same hospital and same doctor. In three years, two
people unrelated but with the same name? Well the story goes on. In this
work, she ties the frame like a hospital bandage as if someone has
broken an arm. A rigid umbilical surrounds the frame. It’s composed of
malleable metal. Could it expose a body? We want to know what went
wrong, in the cellular, the microscopic parts, in the lipids and tissue.
Out of domestic reflexes my body surrounds itself. But the
body ultimately stays what it is: combines of organ, bone, tube. It
resists all sense. This first sculpture resembles dried intestines
pulled through wall. Catgut used to string instruments will last two
thousand years and carry a fresher song. It’s very moving, visceral of
course, but restrained. As vellum’s dried hide insists that there is
time to consider its shape, the shape itself decays. Several of Eva’s
sculptures have deteriorated. They are no longer their original selves.
They cannot be handled or installed as before. Consider a sculpture
that, when first made, is softly draped, understated, organic, erotic,
like the meninges, the protective tissue just under the skull, and is
now a rigid, tawny heap. Maybe what I really want is a round table
discussion about conservation. If you cut out a sizable cube of brain it
retains shape, more or less. We see the pattern develop. She only had a
few hours left to live. There was so much pressure. The whole brain
tipped over and all the intelligence is in the front. I’d like to try a
material that will last. So many of Eva’s raw materials are casting
materials. But why think about them as casting materials? Imagine,
instead, she makes the sculpture directly at the moment from each pliant
or resistant shell. Although it’s fragile, all Eva’s work is tactile.
The work has momentum. In Vinculum, everything is tenuous,
knotted loosely, and can change. And I don’t mind that, within reason.
The work holds its tension even as the sculpture flexes, moves, and
pours itself back into water. It is a life but of the most bizarre kind.
Does it cry? Or grieve? Does it sting? Does it lie? Non-organic, but
place your hand upon its hide and feel the waters riot, witness ecstatic
grammars, fluent hands and a breaking, strong current and waves.
From Rayfish, published by Omnidawn. Copyright © 2017 by Mary Hickman. Used with permission of the author.
