ART-TRIBUTE:Abstract Sculpture by Women 1947-2016
The inaugural exhibition at Hauser Wirth & Schimmel new complex in Los Angeles “Revolution in the Making: Abstract Sculpture by Women, 1947-2016” presents 100 works by 34 artists over the past 70 years, this ambitious undertaking traces ways in which women have changed the course of art by deftly transforming the language of sculpture since the postwar period.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo Hauser Wirth & Schimmel Archive
The exhibition includes many works on loan from nearly 60 major American museums, artists’ estates, and private collections, as well as new sculptures commissioned for the exhibition. To explore the story of these radical shifts and their legacy, “Revolution in the Making: Abstract Sculpture by Women, 1947-2016” unfolds as a thematic historical survey that is international in scope, making women artists central to the history of sculpture by tracing the legacy of studio-based organic abstraction. The exhibition begins in the immediate post-war era with the historically important predecessors Ruth Asawa, Lee Bontecou, Louise Bourgeois, Claire Falkenstein, and Louise Nevelson. Spanning the late ‘40s through the early ‘60s, these works examine Abstraction based upon oblique evocations of the fragmented body and the influence of the unconscious, with seriality and repetition emerging as essential idioms of a new sculptural language. Among highlights here are a group of Bourgeois’s “Personage” sculptures first seen at the Peridot Gallery in 1949. They are juxtaposed with a dramatic installation hanging looped wire sculptures made by Ruth Asawa, also on view are bas-relief works by Lee Bontecou. The exhibition continues with the decades of the ‘60s and ‘70s, and includes works by: Magdalena Abakanowicz, Lynda Benglis, Heidi Bucher, Gego, Françoise Grossen, Eva Hesse, Sheila Hicks, Yayoi Kusama, Mira Schendel, Michelle Stuart, Hannah Wilke and Jackie Winsor. Among highlights here are two late monumental works by Eva Hesse, the latex and canvas floor work “Augment” and the four-part wall piece “Aught” both (1968). Also on view are Sheila Hicks’ “Banisteriopsis” (1965-66) and “Banisteriopsis II” (1965-66/2010) and Magdalena Abakanowicz’s massive “Wheel with Rope” (1973). The exhibition continues with works by: Isa Genzken, Cristina Iglesias, Liz Larner, Anna Maria Maiolino, Marisa Merz, Senga Nengudi, Lygia Pape, and Ursula von Rydingsvard, a Post Modernist generation of increasingly global figures who are far more expansive in their use of space, and whose works signal a foundational shift from discreet sculptural objects toward more installation-based practices. The Highlights here are an array of Isa Genzken’s miniature concrete building-like works from 1986-90 and exceptional translucent wire and metallic string works by Marisa Merz and Lygia Pape. The new generation of sculptors, including numerous works commissioned for the exhibition: Phyllida Barlow, Karla Black, Abigail DeVille, Sonia Gomes, Rachel Khedoori, Lara Schnitger, Shinique Smith, Jessica Stockholder, and Kaari Upson create immersive, color-drenched environments that embrace domestic materials and craft as an embedded discourse, boldly eliminating material. Perhaps most significant of all, the discreet human body, a central preoccupation of women abstract sculptors in earlier decades, has now disappeared. In its place, the artists in the final section of the exhibition offer an empty space for the viewer’s own body. Moving through, under, around, and within these new sculptures, the visitor becomes partner and participant in the continuing quest to articulate the female experience through art.
Info: Curators: Paul Schimmel & Jenni Sorkin, Hauser Wirth & Schimmel, 901 East 3rd Street, Los Angeles, Duration: 13/3-4/9/16, Days & Hours: Wed & Fri-Sun 10:00-17:00, Thu 10:00-20:00, www.hauserwirthschimmel.com
