Eva Hesse @ Fruitmarket

Fruitmarket’s contribution to the EAF programme promises, as ever, to be one of the most subtly challenging of the festival. In conjunction with a major new body of research, Briony Fer and Barry Rosen are presenting a collection of predominantly unseen pieces from the post-war grande dame of sculpture, Eva Hesse. The examination of the re-named ‘studioworks’ is set to re-configure Hesse’s wider oeuvre, throwing light upon an aspect of her practice that has, until now, been viewed as subordinate.
Fer’s exploration of Hesse’s smaller sculptural works doesn’t seek to present a definitive definition, presentation or conceptual position for these so-called ‘test-pieces’; rather, it sets out to highlight the intrinsic value in their categorical uncertainty. The new accompanying publication expounds arguments for these multifarious latex, wire, cheesecloth and papier-mâché forms as visceral examples of the primordial act of making, set against the complexities, as Fer explains, of having ‘no-end-in-sight’. The majority of the works are unnamed, conceived up until now by many as practice models or prototypes for the larger, ‘proper’ works. The exhibition looks poised to readdress them on their own terms: acknowledging the pieces within the loaded context of ‘art-waste’; as occupants of the studio space as a zone of fetishisation; as dynamic tenants of the expanse between ‘object’ and ‘thing’, as tentatively balanced amid the primordial and residual, the conceptual and handmade.
For first-timers and Hesse-veterans, ‘Studiowork’ should hopefully provide both an unparalleled point of access and a pivotal re-imagining, not only of Hesse’s practice, but of the rest of the sculpture on show across the city this month. [Becca Pottinger]