Eva Hesse (b. 1936, Germany – d. 1970, USA)
Hang-up, 1966

“Sculpture about painting” (as The Art Institute of Chicago describes it on its website) is appealing to me both for its formal qualities, it’s intention to blur the painting-structure border and it is deliberate absurdity (as witnessed by Hesse’s own comments in various media).

Testing the grounds of normalised classification is one of my interests that is explored in a number of my works. If not discarded too quickly, the absurdity, the denial of the anticipated can be very productive and generative of new meanings. A humorous aspect of it can help to cross the threshold from apparent nonsense into sensemaking.