Untitled 1967

Here's an untitled drawing made by Eva Hesse. At first, the grid and the dots look all systematic, but I can feel Hesse’s hand in there. She’s a master of materials. I can just picture her in the studio, obsessing over the relationship between order and chaos. I mean, look at that square of circles. How do you get that kind of obsessive repetition? And the light washes in the paper grid makes it seem like the structure is floating. Hesse was totally pushing the boundaries of sculpture and drawing, I can feel her experimenting, and it puts me in mind of Dorothea Rockburne, who used very different materials but was also really interested in process and geometry. The act of making becomes a way of thinking, a way of knowing. Artists are in an ongoing conversation and exchange of ideas across time, inspiring one another’s creativity. And in painting, there is a form of embodied expression which embraces ambiguity and uncertainty, allowing for multiple interpretations and meaning over fixed or definitive readings.