MAREN HASSINGER: Steel Bodies

9 June 2022 - 26 March 2023

Maren Hassinger
Steel Bodies | Socrates Sculpture Park
Maren Hassinger returns to Socrates Sculpture Park with Steel Bodies, a series of new works, following her first presentation with the park in the group exhibition Sculptors Working (1988-1989).
MAREN HASSINGER, VESSEL 9, 2022, PHOTO BY: NICHOLAS KNIGHT STUDIO
Sprawled across Socrates’s five-acre campus and situated against the backdrop of the NYC skyline, these site-responsive works, which take the form of various iconic vessels drawn from ancient archetypes, seamlessly merge the natural and the manmade. Whether suspended in trees or rooted on terra firma, these vessels all share the same internal air and collective space. With some of the works in the series reaching up to eleven feet high, Hassinger’s sculptures provide viewers with an enhanced awareness of their bodies in public space. These works—grounded, yet light—inform and respond to the surrounding environment of city and landscape.
Throughout her artistic practice, Hassinger has looked to the vessel for its rich history, symbolism, and resonance with the human body. She observes that “vessel” is a term often ascribed to women but asks that we free ourselves from the traditional limitations of that label, using her work to expand its meaning.
“Vessels are what we all are – and it’s within our capacity to recognize each other as companions…Whoever we are, wherever we’re from, we are companions – capable of compassion for one another.”

- Maren Hassinger
Installation Shot: Maren Hassinger, Vessel 7, Socrates Sculpture Park, 2022, Photo by: Woomin Kim
Hassinger’s steel works nod to her amphora drawings, first created in 2021. Representing the ancient Greek water vessel, the artist delicately sketched the outline of these pots with a faint sweeping mark, the shape and airiness of Amphora I analogous to Vessel 5 on view at the park.
Amphora II with curved handles like arms resting akimbo resembles the silhouette of Vessel 6 as the metallic graphite mark reflects the wispy threads of wire rope. With these simple gestures– open forms and fine lines– the artist reminds us that at our core we are the same, conceived as equals.
Installation Shot: Maren Hassinger, Bushes, Socrates Sculpture Park, 2022, Photo by: Nicolas Knight Studio

Artworks
MAREN HASSINGER
Bushes, 2021
In addition to Steel Bodies, Hassinger’s Bushes, part of her 2021 Dia Bridgehampton commission, are also on view. Mimicking the natural landscape, Bushes harkens back to Hassinger’s 1988 work Three Bushes shown at Socrates. Hassinger was only one of four women to participate in the 17 artist group exhibition Sculptors Working (1988-1989). Her inclusion in the exhibition is an early testament to her status as a trailblazer for women in the arts.
At the time, each of her three steel bushes were sited in a different location: one beside a fence and the other two in the marsh grass. Through their seemingly haphazard placements, Three Bushes brought attention to nature’s subsistence in urban spaces, sacred and tentative, but resilient nonetheless.
Socrates Sculpture Park, Sculptors Working, Card, 1988

Over the years, Socrates Sculpture Park has grown greener and more robust, evolving to become a prominent fixture in New York City’s public art ecosystem. In a similar manner, Hassinger’s work has continued to expand and flourish, responding to the ever-changing physical and cultural landscape. Her larger-than-life Steel Bodies, porous and open, challenge us to consider our relationships with each other and the environment. In the qualities shared between these steel forms and between us, our commonality writ large, we are indeed all vessels.
Portrait of Maren Hassinger at Socrates Sculpture Park, Photo by: Byron Guinanzaca

MAREN HASSINGER (b. 1947, Los Angeles, CA) lives and works in New York City. She received her BA from Bennington College and her MFA in Fiber Structure from University of California, Los Angeles. She has exhibited widely in both the United States and abroad and has recently been commissioned to make work for Ugo Rondinone’s Sculpture Milwaukee, Dia Bridgehampton, the Smithsonian Museum, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Aspen Art Museum, and Destination Crenshaw in addition to Socrates Sculpture Park. Her work will appear in upcoming exhibitions at MOMA, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and in a two-person exhibition at IVAM alongside her longtime performance partner Senga Nengudi. Maren Hassinger is the recipient of numerous honors, including a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Women's Caucus for the Arts. Her work is included in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago; Baltimore Museum of Art; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Modern Art, NYC; the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC, among others. She lives and works in New York City.

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MAREN HASSINGER: Steel Bodies

Maren Hassinger

MAREN HASSINGER

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