FRIEZE MASTERS 2023 : Maren Hassinger: On Dangerous Ground

11 - 15 October 2023

Maren Hassinger: On Dangerous Ground
Frieze Masters 2023 | Booth S14
MAREN HASSINGER, On Dangerous Ground (artist in studio), April 1981 Photo: © Museum Associates/LACMA

In 1981 Maren Hassinger was invited by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to make work for a solo exhibition in Gallery Six, a small windowless space tucked away on the third floor. Hassinger, the first Black artist to have a solo presentation at the institution, approached the opportunity with some skepticism. At this early stage in her career, she found the Museum context problematic as an artist whose practice championed the ephemeral in order to challenge societal values.
Her response to the invitation was a modular installation titled On Dangerous Ground. Modular, understood as a single motif repeated to fill space but also temporary. Bristling sheaves of wire ropes were tightly clustered in the gallery space and scattered along the wall, creating a palpable tension. In the original museum text, Katherine Hart recounts that “while appearing ‘natural,’ on a closer inspection- (the elements) exist in a separate plane, still shadows of a living form.” Nested in a long narrow hallway with hauntingly high ceilings, the installation evoked an eerie sense of the decline of order and balance in nature.
MAREN HASSINGER, On Dangerous Ground, 1981
MAREN HASSINGER, Installation view, On Dangerous Ground, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA, 21 May – 21 June 1981. Photo: © Museum Associates/LACMA

I wanted the character of whatever I placed in the room to intimidate, to infringe, to threaten. I began to think of a nature gone mad. It seemed that spiky, briar-like vegetation might be the answer. The setting had to appear dense, dark, eerie, shadowy. There had to be a sense of things seen, unseen, half-seen. I decided on frenetic bushes as a device to develop this theme.

- Maren Hassinger (1981)
MAREN HASSINGER, On Dangerous Ground (artist in studio), April 1981. Photo: © Museum Associates/LACMA

Growing up in Los Angeles during a period of rapid development, Hassinger felt as though the “contemporary urban reality” lacked a centeredness, stating “There’s a lot of diversity but no divinity. An absence of freedom—only a kind of madness and anger.” Throughout Hassinger’s career she has referenced nature as a means to unite the collective and inspire equality. The artist's use of wire rope began when she unearthed the material in a junkyard on Alameda Street during her student days in the Seventies. Turned away from the MFA program for Sculpture, she was encouraged to join the nascent Fiber Arts program, inspiring the artist to manipulate wire rope to bridge the gap between her practice in sculpture and fiber art. Reminiscent of dry grass, or ripples on the surface of a pond, Hassinger used the material to mimic nature, a place where she found peace. Ultimately it served to distinguish her from other environmental artists by using industrial materials to create natural forms.
MAREN HASSINGER, Splintered Starburst (On Dangerous Ground), 1981/2023
MAREN HASSINGER On Dangerous Ground (studio), April 1981. Photo: © Museum Associates/LACMA

Any ground can be dangerous if you're going to put yourself at risk. For me to have a show in a museum as an artist, I was very aware that I was on dangerous ground. I was at risk of not being accepted, turned away, or just ignored.

When I was starting out, I did not fit into the artworld, but one has to challenge the prevailing aesthetic in order to make meaningful art. On Dangerous Ground was a new environment where I could exist. The material evokes my feeling of anxiety of being a newcomer—my trepidation towards a solo museum show. On Dangerous Ground means, I’m on Dangerous Ground, and by extension so are you.

- Maren Hassinger (2023)
- MAREN HASSINGER, Splintering (On Dangerous Ground), 1981/2023
- MAREN HASSINGER, On Dangerous Ground (artist in studio), April 1981. Photo: © Museum Associates/LACMA
While Hassinger’s wire bushes are initially identified as “natural,” on closer inspection they exist on a separate plane, stiff shadows of a living form. But Hassinger does share with these artist what Kirk Varnedoe has described as a shift in the attitude of artists from less monumental earth projects and impositions upon the environment toward work on a less aggrandizing and more humble scale. It is art that also reflects an interest in creating a collaborative relationship between artist and nature.

- Katharine Hart
Original museum text from "On Dangerous Ground" at LACMA, 1981

As much of Hassinger’s work to date had been temporary, freeing her from the constraints of the art market so that she might effectively challenge social values, placing the work in an institutional context was fraught. The title of the work conveys at once the threatening physicality of the work as well as the artist’s own relationship to the museum setting as a conceptual artist, woman, and artist of color.

For Frieze Masters, the Gallery revisits and recreates elements of the installation, reexamining what it means to be On Dangerous Ground.
MAREN HASSINGER, Bush (On Dangerous Ground), 1981/2023
1981 Q & A with Maren Hassinger for On Dangerous Ground at LACMA: Listen Here.
Portrait of Maren Hassinger. Photo: Grace Roselli

MAREN HASSINGER (b. 1947) has built an interdisciplinary practice that articulates the relationship between nature and humanity. Carefully choosing materials for their innate characteristics, Hassinger has explored the subject of movement, family, love, nature, environment, consumerism, identity, and race. The artist uses her materials to mimic nature, whether bundling it to resemble a monolithic sheaf of wheat or planting it in cement to create an industrial garden. Within the past five years, the artist has executed commissions for Dia Bridgehampton, Socrates Sculpture Park, the Hirshhorn Museum, and the Aspen Art Museum. Her work is currently installed on the terrace of the Art Institute of Chicago, along the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia, at Longhouse Reserve in East Hampton, and in Ugo Rondinone's Sculpture Milwaukee. Hassinger is included in Groundswell: Women of Land Art at the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas and will be honored with an upcoming two-person survey alongside Senga Nengudi at IVAM, Valencia as well as an exhibition focused on their work in performance at the Cooley Gallery, Reed College, Portland, OR. She is the recipient of the Women’s Caucus for the Arts Lifetime Achievement Award. Her work can be found in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago; the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington D.C; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Museum of Modern Art, NYC; the San Francisco Museum of Art; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and the Whitney Museum, NYC, among others.

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FRIEZE MASTERS 2023 : Maren Hassinger: On Dangerous Ground

Maren Hassinger: On Dangerous Ground

1981 Q & A with Maren Hassinger for On Dangerous Ground at LACMA: Listen Here.

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