Revolution in the Making:
Abstract Sculpture by Women, 1947 – 2016

13 March - 4 September 2016

Los Angeles

Beginning 13 March 2016, Hauser Wirth & Schimmel is pleased to present ‘Revolution in the Making: Abstract Sculpture by Women, 1947 – 2016,’ the inaugural exhibition at its new complex in the heart of the downtown Los Angeles Arts District. Through nearly 100 works made by 34 artists over the past seventy years, this ambitious undertaking traces ways in which women have changed the course of art by deftly transforming the language of sculpture since the postwar period. Works on view reveal their makers inventing radically new forms and processes that privilege solo studio practice, tactility, and the idiosyncrasies of the artist’s own hand. ‘Revolution in the Making’ explores multiple strains of artistic approaches, characterized by abstraction and repetition, that reject the precedent of a monolithic masterwork on a pedestal, employing such tactics as stacking, hanging, and intertwining, to create an intimate reciprocity between artist and viewer. The exhibition examines how elements that are central to art today – including engagement with found, experimental, and recycled materials, as well as an embrace of contingency, imperfection, and unstructured play – were propelled by the work of women who, in seeking new means to express their own voices, dramatically expanded the definition of sculpture.

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About the Artists

Isa Genzken

Isa Genzken has long been considered one of Germany’s most important and influential contemporary artists. Born in Bad Oldesloe, Germany, Genzken studied at the renowned Kunstakademie Düsseldorf whose faculty at the time included Joseph Beuys, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Benjamin H.D. Buchloh and Gerhard Richter. Since the 1970s, Genzken’s diverse...

Rachel Khedoori

Australia-born, Zurich-based artist Rachel Khedoori poses provocative phenomenological questions in her work that merges installation, sculpture, film and photography. Khedoori gained international recognition with her first comprehensive solo exhibition at Kunsthalle Basel and Kunstverein Braunschweig in 2001.

Eva Hesse

Born in 1936, Eva Hesse was one of the icons of American art in the 1960s, her work being a major influence on subsequent generations of artists. Comprehensive solo exhibitions in the past 30 years as well as a retrospective that toured from the San Francisco MoMA to the Museum...

Phyllida Barlow

For almost 60 years, British artist Phyllida Barlow took inspiration from her surroundings to create imposing installations that can be at once menacing and playful. She created large-scale yet anti-monumental sculptures from inexpensive, low-grade materials such as cardboard, fabric, plywood, polystyrene, scrim, plaster and cement. These constructions were often painted...

Anna Maria Maiolino

Anna Maria Maiolino is one of the most significant artists working in Brazil today. Born 1942 in Italy, Maiolino’s practice expresses a concern with creative and destructive processes. Working across a wide range of disciplines and mediums—spanning drawing, printmaking, poetry, film, performance, installation and sculpture—Maiolino relentlessly explores notions of subjectivity...

Mira Schendel

Mira Schendel is one of the most significant artists to emerge from Latin America during the twentieth century. Born in Switzerland in 1919, Schendel emigrated to Brazil from Europe in 1949, ultimately settling in São Paulo in 1953, where she swiftly occupied a leading place in the country's vibrant post-war...

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