Screening Room: Eva Hesse Films

On the occasion of the exhibition ‘Eva Hesse. Five Sculptures’ at Hauser & Wirth 22^nd Street, we're thrilled to present a selection of films focused on the artist, playing on loop in our amphitheater at Hauser Wirth 18th Street. 

The films: 
‘Eva Hesse in her Studio’ (1968) 
by Dorothy Levitt Beskind 
22 min 
Courtesy of Dorothy Levitt Beskind Film and Photographic Archive, New York 
© All rights reserved. 

‘Art in Process IV’ (1969) 
by Dorothy Levitt Beskind 
5 min 
Courtesy of Dorothy Levitt Beskind Film and Photographic Archive, New York 
© All rights reserved.   

‘Eva Hesse: A Retrospective’ (2002) 
39 min 
Produced by Still Life Pictures with the cooperation of the Estate of Eva Hesse and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, organizer of the exhibition ‘Eva Hesse: A Retrospective’ 

‘The Afterlife of Eva Hesse’s Expanded Expansion’ (2022)  
Directed by Stephen J. Grant and Stephan Knuesel 
15 min 
Created on the occasion of the exhibition ‘Eva Hesse: Expanded Expansion’ March 8–October 16, 2022, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York. 

Start times are detailed below, and all screenings are free and open to the public. 
 
Start Times  
10 am, 11:30 am, 1 pm, 2:30 pm, 4 pm, 5:30 pm

All films will play on loop during gallery hours from Thursday 2 May – Friday 26 July, except for the following dates:

Tue 28 May - Sat 1 June, due to the screening of Rita Ackermann's 'Listen to the Image'
Thu 20 June - Fri 5 July, due to Ciné Pluto

About 'Eva Hesse. Five Sculptures’ 
Eva Hesse (1936-1970) transformed the language of sculpture through her pioneering use of alternative forms and materials. Challenging the hard-edged, manufactured aesthetic of the prevailing minimalist movement of her day, Hesse’s use of latex, Fiberglas and industrial plastics opened new possibilities in art. Half a century later, her groundbreaking oeuvre is as potent as it was in 1968, the year of the first and only exhibition of her sculptures held during her lifetime. That there have been some fifteen exhibitions in the decades following her death in 1970 is a testament to Hesse’s continued contemporaneity.

Beginning 2 May, we will celebrate the 25th anniversary of the estate’s representation by the gallery by spotlighting Hesse’s remarkable achievements. This exhibition, organized by Barry Rosen, longtime adviser to the Hesse estate, in collaboration with art historian and critic Briony Fer, reunites five of her most celebrated large-scale works, all on loan from major American museums and all made in the most intense period at the end of her life from 1967 to 1969. 

About Eva Hesse 
Born in Hamburg Germany in 1936, Eva Hesse is one of the icons of American art of the 1960s, her work being a major influence on subsequent generations of artists. Comprehensive solo exhibitions in the past 50 years, as well as a retrospective that toured from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art to the Museum Wiesbaden in Germany and finally to the Tate Modern in London, have highlighted the lasting interest that her oeuvre has generated. Hesse cultivated mistakes and surprises, precariousness and enigma, to make works that could transcend literal associations. The objects she produced, at times barely present yet powerfully charismatic, came to play a central role in the transformation of contemporary art practice.