Untitled 

Curator: Well, hello, and welcome. Before us is an "Untitled" artwork, a mixed-media construction, including fiber and textile, by the artist Eva Hesse. Editor: It kind of startles you, doesn't it? It has this weird, almost repulsive attractiveness. Something like deep-sea creature someone pulled from the ocean floor...vaguely organic, but unsettling. Curator: A suitable reaction, given the postminimalist inclinations of Hesse and her peers, working with unconventional materials to evoke emotional responses to simple forms. Note the almost perverse simplicity, the tension between soft volume and trailing lines... Editor: Yeah, the draping lines are really what got me. They’re almost mournful. There's a gravity in their hanging...I wonder, is that Hesse exploring emotional states? Curator: Absolutely, and also drawing on abstraction's established ability to speak about something beyond what is visible to the casual eye. By allowing her artistic process to become visible to us through the wrapping string, the rough surface...Hesse lets us see the struggle for the finished work. Editor: Right. There's a tension I get with it. Like the outside—what we see—only tells part of a more complicated story, so what's underneath becomes so important, because we almost can see that. Does that make sense? Curator: Perfectly. That sense of implied narrative and veiled meanings is central to how we might consider her engagement with phenomenology. Editor: Oh, okay! So, with the materials like textile and cord... there's a real presence to them, almost tactile and sensual? Curator: Precisely! It has an intimate, bodily presence and that subverts against classical sculptural ideals that have previously valued permanency. It’s meant to decay and transform, you could almost call it impermanent. Editor: You're right, which turns that repulsion I first felt into a kind of tenderness. Okay, now it is starting to grab me. Thank you, the sea monster is revealing her secrets... Curator: Agreed. This untitled sculpture shows just how versatile simple shapes become with complex relationships. Editor: This just goes to show that art is meant to be an ongoing encounter...you can come back to an artwork like this years later and be in a completely different mindset.