“Forms Larger and Bolder” at mumok in Vienna concentrates on a selection of drawings by Eva Hesse, all from the collection at the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College, Ohio, which houses Hesse’s archives. A wide range of material is exhibited, including watercolors of flowers, figurative studies of nudes on paper, sketches for sculptural works, and paper collages of machine-like parts. All works are framed and grouped within an exhibition display that takes the form of a fold-out cube, which, according to the exhibition text, is based on the principle of “the box,” a term important for Hesse and a nod to her involvement with (as well as demarcation from) minimalist practices. The difference between archival material — such as sketches for sculptural pieces (which include measurements and annotations on materials such as, “Lots of thin long forms to be used together with rubber or thin cheese cloth. Can cloth go through forms?”) — and drawings that were intended as works in their own right is done away with. Doodles hang next to compositions in watercolor. Most of the works in the exhibition are untitled, something that struck me because I have always been so in awe of Hesse’s poetic titles: Contingent, Hang Up, Expanded Expansion. In many ways, the hanging and display are at odds with Hesse’s incredible humor, playfulness, and unpredictability in her handling of material and form. Yet it highlights how she came from the realm of drawing and moved into sculpture while still maintaining that practice: her rendering familiar forms as well as strange, anthropomorphic technical devices that are made up of elements resembling pumps and tubes (mechanical and bodily); her arrangement of these forms on paper, at play with plane and space; the importance of line as it becomes material and tactile; and the variety of constant technical experimentation, from watercolor to felt-tip pen to photogram to collage.
