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28/1/2013

Eva Hesse / Bruce Nauman

Hauser & Wirth - Savile Row, London

Eva Hesse - 1965

In 1964, Eva Hesse and her husband Tom Doyle were invited by the industrialist Friedrich Arnhard Scheidt to a residency in Kettwig an der Ruhr, Germany. The following fifteen months marked a significant transformation in Hesse's practice.

'Eva Hesse 1965' brings together key drawings, paintings and reliefs from this short, yet pivotal period where the artist was able to re-think her approach to colour, materials and her two-dimensional practice, and begin moving towards sculpture, preparing herself for the momentous strides she would take upon her return to New York.

Hesse's studio space was located in an abandoned textile factory in Kettwig an der Ruhr. The building still contained machine parts, tools and materials from its previous use and the angular forms of these disused machines and tools served as inspiration for Hesse's mechanical drawings and paintings. Sharp lines come together in these works to create complex and futuristic, yet nonsensical forms, which Hesse described in her writings as '...clean and clear – but crazy like machines...'.

Seeking a continuation of her mechanical drawings, in March of 1965, Hesse began a period of feverish work in which she made fourteen reliefs, which venture into three-dimensional space. Works such as 'H + H' (1965) and 'Oomamaboomba' (1965) are the material embodiment of her precisely linear mechanical drawings.

Vibrant colours of gouache, varnish and tempera are built up using papier maché and objects Hesse found in the abandoned factory: wood, metal and most importantly, cord, which was often left to hang, protruding from the picture plane. This motif would reappear in the now iconic sculptures Hesse would make in New York.

The time Hesse spent in Germany amounted to much more than a period of artistic experimentation. In Germany, Hesse was afforded the freedom to exercise her unique ability to manipulate materials, creating captivating, enigmatic works which would form the foundation of her emerging sculptural practice.

Born in Hamburg in 1936, Eva Hesse and her older sister Helen were sent to Holland on a kindertransport at the end of 1938. Their parents fled Nazi Germany two months later, and the family came to New York. Hesse studied at Pratt Institute of Design, the Cooper Union, and the Yale School of Art and Architecture. Following her studies, Hesse was able to pursue her art for just over a decade, before she died from brain cancer in 1970.

Since her first solo exhibition in 1963, Hesse's works have been featured in numerous major exhibitions internationally. Recent exhibitions include 'Eva Hesse Spectres 1960', organised by Luanne McKinnon for the University of New Mexico Art Museum, which opened at UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles CA (2010); and travelled to University of New Mexico Art Museum, Albuquerque NM (2010); and the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn NY (2011); and 'Eva Hesse Studiowork', which opened at Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland (2009); and travelled to Camden Arts Centre, London, England (2009); Tapies Foundation, Barcelona, Spain (2010); Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada (2010); Berkeley Art Museum / Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley CA (2011); and Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston MA (2011). A major retrospective of Hesse's work was organised by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco CA and Museum Wiesbaden, Wiesbaden, Germany in 2002. The exhibition travelled to Tate Modern, London, England in 2002.

'Eva Hesse 1965' will be accompanied by a new publication, featuring texts by Todd Alden, Jo Applin, Susan Fisher Sterling and Kirsten Swenson, published by Yale University Press.

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Bruce Nauman - Mindfuck

Curated by Philip Larratt-Smith

From 30 January, Hauser & Wirth will present 'Bruce Nauman / mindfuck' in the North Gallery, Savile Row. Curated by Philip Larratt- Smith, the exhibition features a rigorous selection of works from throughout Nauman's career, with a particular emphasis on his iconic neon sculptures and installations.

To speak about the work of Bruce Nauman in the language of psychoanalytic theory is a complex task, given the heterogeneity of his production and the variety of schools of psychoanalytic thought. How is it that the critical discourse surrounding a body of work whose central themes are human nature, the mind-body split, language, sex, death, and aggression, has repressed its obvious psychoanalytic and psychological implications?

The experience of certain works by Nauman approximates a state of trauma, equivalent to the conversion symptoms of the hysteric, to the utterances of the psychotic, to the repetition compulsion tied to the death drive, to the reprimands of the superego, to good and bad internal objects, and to the logic of dreams. Undergirding all of his work is an uncanny ability to create visual and experiential equivalents for metapsychology and to tap into the deep structure of the human unconscious.

The exhibition's title, 'mindfuck', is a slang term that may be used as both a noun and verb, situation and action. It can mean to brainwash or manipulate someone, or describe a distressing situation or incomprehensible event.

A 'mindfucker' is anyone who makes a living by playing with the heads of his clientele, be it a guru, a psychoanalyst, a prostitute, or an artist. Like Nauman's deceptively simple phrases, which turn on puns and reversals and often defy rational understanding, the vernacular 'mindfuck' distills in a single word the dichotomies and aporias that the exhibition proposes to explore, literally yoking together the rational and the intuitive, the verbal and the unutterable, the abstract and the physical.

'Bruce Nauman / mindfuck' highlights the enduring importance of the mind-body split in the artist's work. Neon sculptures such as 'Sex and Death / Double "69"' (1985) and 'Good boy / Bad boy' (1986 – 1987) could be said to represent the conscious and cerebral side of his art, whereas environmental installations such as 'Carousel (Stainless Steel Version)' (1988) and 'Untitled (Helman Gallery Parallelogram)' (1971) foreground the phenomenological aspect of his exploration of perception, space, and the body. His artistic project opens up into the realm of psychology, anthropology, sociology, and behavioural science. The artist once stated that he wished to make 'art that was just there all at once...like getting hit in the back of the neck with a baseball bat'.

'Bruce Nauman / mindfuck' is accompanied by a publication featuring a unique, extended essay by Larratt-Smith, 'mindfuck / notes for fun from rear', that will collage original writing with images and citations from film, literature, art, politics, and psychoanalysis. As Nauman emerged at a time when behaviorism, object relations, and Gestalt psychology combined to emphasise the empirical over the symbolic world of the unconscious, this publication represents the first time that the artist's work has been viewed through a Freudian lens.

Born in Fort Wayne IN in 1941, Bruce Nauman is widely regarded as one of the most important American contemporary artists. Since the mid- 1960s, Nauman has worked with sculpture, photography, performance, installation, film and video in an on-going exploration of the power of language in art. Nauman has had many retrospectives and his work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions at major art institutions worldwide, including 'Bruce Nauman: Days', which opened at Museum of Modern Art, New York NY (2010) and travelled to the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, England (2012); 'Bruce Nauman: Dream Passage', Hamburger Bahnhof, Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin, Germany (2010); 'Notations / Bruce Nauman: Days and Giorni', Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia PA (2009) and his commission for the Turbine Hall, 'Raw Materials' at Tate Modern, London, England (2004). In 2009, Nauman represented the United States at the 53rd Venice Biennale.

Philip Larratt-Smith, born in Toronto, Canada in 1979, is an independent curator and writer based in New York and, since 2011, Curator of International Projects at Malba – Fundación Costantini in Buenos Aires. Larratt-Smith has curated numerous exhibitions including 'Bye Bye American Pie', MALBA – Fundación Costantini, Buenos Aires, Argentina (2012); 'Louise Bourgeois: The Return of the Repressed', Freud Museum, London, England (2012); and 'Andy Warhol, Mr. America', MALBA – Fundación Costantini, Buenos Aires, Argentina (2009). Larratt-Smith has written on artists such as Jenny Holzer, Roni Horn, Guillermo Kuitca, Tracey Emin, and Philip Guston. He is currently preparing the complete psychoanalytic writings of Louise Bourgeois for publication. Larratt-Smith divides his time between New York and Buenos Aires.

Press Contact:
Ana Vukadin, ana@suttonpr.com
+44 207 183 3577
Maria de Lamerens, marial@hauserwirth.com
+44 207 255 8990

Opening: Tuesday 29 January 6 – 8 pm

Hauser & Wirth - Savile Row
23 Savile Row, London
Hours: tue-sat 10am-6pm
Free Admission

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