Eva Hesse's Studiowork

除了她的大型雕塑外，美国艺术家伊娃·黑塞（Eva Hesse）还制作了大量的小型实验性作品，使用的材料包括乳胶、金属丝、金属雕塑、粗棉布、胶带和蜡。这些小作品通常被称为“试验品”，因为人们认为它们是技术实验，尤其是使用非艺术材料，比如黑塞从1967年开始使用的乳胶。然而，尽管有少数是这种狭义上的“试验品”，但大多数不是。它们之所以被这样分类，是因为它们不属于任何其他已确立的类别。虽然它们与她的绘画活动密切相关，但它们并不是绘画活动的同义词。那么，如果它们不是技术性的实验，它们不仅仅是她更大的工作的准备调查，那么它们是什么呢？这就是我试图回答的问题，不是通过将它们崇拜为公认意义上的“雕塑”，也不是试图将它们一个一个地与更大的作品联系起来。相反，通过将这些各种各样的物品重新命名为“工作室”，我打算将它们作为Hesse探索项目的一部分，以拆除传统的雕塑观念。而不是边缘，因为他们已经被传统铸造，我认为工作室是这个项目的核心部分。正是因为这些物品低于我们通常认为的雕塑的门槛，它们为思考黑塞所从事的激进的解构类别提供了枢纽。不幸的是，在《艺术论坛》（Artforum）上刊登的一张照片中，这些测试作品与她在1970年英年早逝后的个人写作节选一起进行了说明，因此它们被认为是这位艺术家悲剧生活的令人伤感的反映。我的研究强烈反对这种传记式的方法。这项研究关注的不是传记，而是雕塑对象的“毁灭”方式，这里重要的不是生命被缩短的情节剧，而是工作室作品所体现的生成和生产冲动。虽然许多物品可能在艺术家死后留在了工作室，但它们是关于一个正在进行的项目。它们是关于艺术家对她的材料的强烈的身体参与-在穿线，折叠，分层，切割，装订或包装的过程中显而易见。从某种意义上说，这些小东西是Hesse所做过的最具肉体和感性的东西，也是最具实验性的东西，这个项目寻求一种描述和思考它们的方式，而不是将它们回归到他们如此公然蔑视的传统类别。黑塞死后，有些作品留在了工作室——包括许多从未被看到或展出的东西——有些是她送给朋友的。当她送给索尔·勒维特（Sol LeWitt）一些时，他把它们收藏在一个玻璃糕点盒里，让人想起奥尔登堡（Oldenburg）的一个糕点盒，用来装他的纸糊食物。喜欢这个想法，Hesse做了一些其他的，并在她在纽约的画廊展出了一个。通过这种方式，工作室“泄漏”到公共论坛中，并进一步加剧了对其地位的困惑。有四个这样的玻璃柜装满了物品（我们都打算在展览中展示，这将是本次研究的成果之一）。在这种情况下，每个架子都代表了我所说的“事物景观”，这是一种由各种各样的身体形状和材料组成的小景观，通常是发自内心的，因为它们是微型的。在案例的背景下，这些小东西的循环利用表明了对剩余工作室碎片的不断再利用和回收，它的不断重新激活。工作室作品的地位是非常不稳定的，它提出了许多重要的问题，不仅是关于黑塞自己作为艺术家的实践，而且让我们反思在60年代中后期这个关键的历史时刻雕塑发生了什么，其后果至今仍被感受到。

Alongside her large-scale sculpture, the American artist Eva Hesse produced a large number of small, experimental works in a wide range of materials including latex, wire-mesh, sculp-metal, cheesecloth, masking tape and wax. These small works have often been called 'test-pieces' on the assumption that they were technical experiments, especially with non-art materials like latex which Hesse began to use from 1967 on. However, although a few were 'test-pieces' in this narrow sense, most were not. They have been cate]gorsed in this way because they do not fit any other established category. although they are intimately tied to her drawing activity, they are not synonymous with it. So, if they are not technical experiments and they are not merely preparatory investigations for her larger work, what are they? This is what I shall try to answer, not by fetishising them as 'sculpture' in the accepted sense, nor by attempting to link them up, object by object, to the larger work. Instead, by renaming these multifarious objects 'studiowork' I intend to examine them as part of Hesse's exploratory project to dismantle conventional ideas of sculpture. Rather than marginal, as they have been traditionally cast, I see the studiowork as a central part of this project. Precisely because these objects fall below the threshold of what we normally think of as sculpture, they provide the hinge for thinking about the radical undoing of categories that Hesse was engaged. It is an unfortunate fact that because the test-pieces were illustrated in a photograph in Artforum alongside excerpts from her personal writings after her untimely death in 1970, they have been cast as the mawkish reflection of the tragedy of the artist's life. My research could not oppose this biographical approach more strongly. It is not the biography that this research is concerned with but the way the kind of 'ruination' of the sculptural object that matters here dwells not in the melodrama of a life cut short but the generative, productive impulse that the studiowork embodies. Though many of the obejcts may have been left in the studio after the artist's death, they are about an ongoing project. They are about the intense physical involvement an artist has with her materials - evident in the processes of threading, folding, layering, cutting, stapling or wrapping. In a sense, these small things are the most bodily and sensual things that Hesse ever made, as well as the most experimental, and this project seeks a way to decsribe and think about them in a way that does not return them to the conventional categories that thery so blatently defy. Whilst some of the studiowork was left in the studio after Hesse died - including many things that have never been seen or exhibited - some were given by the artist to her friends. When she gave some to Sol LeWitt he famously collected them in a glass pastry case reminsiscent of one of Oldenburg's pastry cases for his papier mache food. Liking the idea, Hesse made some others and exhibited one at her gallery in New York. In this way the studiowork 'leaks out' into the public forum, and further exacerbates confusions over its status. There exist four of these glass cases filled with objects (all of which we intend to show in the exhibition which will be one of the outcomes of this research). In the cases, each shelf represents what I call a 'thingscape', a little landscape of an astonishing range of bodily shapes and materials, often as visceral as they are miniature. The recycling of these small things in the context of the cases suggests the constant re-use and salvage of remaindered studio debris, its constant re-animation. The status of the studiowork is remarkably precarious, and begs many important questions not only about Hesse's own practice as an artist, but also makes us reflect on what happens to sculpture at this pivotal historical moment in the mid-to late 60s, the fall-out from which is still being felt today.