ART-TRIBUTE: Sheila Hicks,Espace Louis Vuitton München & Foundation De 11 Lijnen

Sheila Hicks is a pioneering artist noted for objects and public commissions whose structures are built of color and fiber. Trained as a painter, Hicks became interested in global, and particularly South American, textile traditions, going on to develop her distinctive merger of painting, sculpture, drawing, and weaving. For her, the way that the richly colored lines of her pieces move and intersect is a form of drawing in three dimensions.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: galerie frank elbaz Archive

Sheila Hicks is an artist who builds with color and thinks with line. From her earliest work created in the late ‘50s to the present day, she has crossed the bounds of painting, sculpture, design, drawing, and woven form, and has been a critical force in redefining the domains of contemporary art-making. While challenging the relationship of fine art to commercial art, and studio practice to site-specific commissions, Hicks has, above all, reimagined the profound, vital relationship between artist and artisan. Born in Hastings, Nebraska, Hicks studied at Yale University, studying painting with master teacher and theorist Josef Albers and history of art with George Kubler, a pivotal figure in the rediscovery of Mesoamerican art. Hicks’s self-described practice of “linear thinking” and “composing texture” reflects the Bauhaus tradition of finding the expressive voices of different materials and the dynamic interactions of color. Her work reflects equally her studies with Kubler, in particular the juxtapositions of small PreIncaic weavings with the colossal structures of Machu Picchu. Awarded a Fulbright scholarship to paint in Chile, she photographed indigenous weavers and archaeological sites throughout the Andes. This, along with extended trips to the volcanic regions of Villarica, the island of Chiloé, and Tierra del Fuego, continue to influence her work to this day. She moved to Mexico in 1960 to teach basic design and color in the architecture department at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma, where she met Félix Candela, Luis Barragán, and Ricardo Legorreta. In 1967 she established a studio in the quartier Latin in Paris, where she continues to live and work; she is represented by galerie frank elbaz. Two exhibitions of her works are on view this period in Europe. “Indeed” at the Foundation De 11 Lijnen in Oudenburg and “Predestined Colour Waves” at Espace Louis Vuitton München. In “Indeed” Sheila Hicks has used the ancestral language of weaving for over 50 years. In order to form ties with surrounding space she creates artistic encounters with vegetal, animal and industrially made fibers. Her mural works, sculptures, installations and performances are realized with natural and technologically sophisticated materials with explosive colors or majestically monochromatic hues. The use of linen in Hicks’ work echoes the historical linen culture tradition of Flanders. The fortuitous return of this material to its original cultivation site is emphasized by the interest shown by the artist for the essence of this material. Thus, some of the works’ titles resonate with the different steps of harvesting and spinning of linen. The vast vocabulary of structures employed by the artist when working with linen, often mixed with other fibers, deploys itself in the atypical space of the Foundation. Works created especially for the exhibition inhabit and punctuate the space, invading it at times. The artist has adapted various works to the architecture, both indoors and outdoors. The in-situ installations create links with the surrounding countryside. “Predestined Colour Waves” is the first monographic exhibition in Germany since 1970 of her unique oeuvre. The exhibition explores the relationship between Hicks’s soft sculptures, ever-evolving spatial experimentations, and use of colour as key narratives in a practice of structuring with thread and textiles. The exhibition brings together a range of works: recent large-scale installations such as “Atterrissage” a monumental sculpture of explosive colours and billowing proportions, and “La Femme Principale Bluma” with its intricately enveloped mass of linen fibre, studies for new and historic public commissions such as watercolour drawings for the artist’s forthcoming contribution to the 20th Biennale of Sydney, prototype models related to her Ford Foundation silk bas-relief tapestries in New York, which were first realised in 1967 and re-created 2013–14. A selection of smaller-scale works will also be presented: fibre-based calligraphic drawings: “Trésors et Secrets” linen and cotton bundles containing secret objects and “Minimes, exquisite” small weavings that are made on her improvised mobile loom and resemble pages from a hand-woven journal.

Info: Indeed, Curator: Camille Morineau, Foundation De 11 Lijnen, Groenedijkstraat 1, Oudenburg, Duration: 4/12/15-27/2/16, Days & Hours: Fri & Sat 14:00-18:00, http://www.fd11l.com
Predestined Colour Waves, Espace Louis Vuitton München, Maximilianstraße 2a, Munich, Duration: 8/10/15-23/1/16, Days & Hours: Mon-Fri 11:00-19:00, Sat 10:00-18:00