MAREN HASSINGER

Wire rope has long held a prominent role in Maren Hassinger’s artistic practice. As a sculptor placed in the Fiber Arts program at UCLA in the early Seventies, Hassinger bridged the gap between the two with wire rope. Binding nature with industry, the artist takes a biomimetic approach to the material, whether creating a man-made environment embedding wire rope in concrete or unraveling the rope to form skeins of un-natural fiber. In the case of Untitled Vessel (Small Body) and Untitled Vessel (Large Body), the artist takes the latter approach, weaving the wire rope through the openings of a metal armature, moving over and under the support as if it were threads in a piece of fabric. The vessels that form the basis of this recent series serve as metaphor for the human body. While reminding us that we are each built from the same building blocks, that we are in essence all equal, the prickly wire rope that covers these containers suggests a more complicated truth.