Aspen Art Museum

Since the 1970s, multidisciplinary artist Maren Hassinger has fashioned commanding sculptures using galvanized wire rope. Constructed at varying scales, these structures resemble all manner of vegetation, juxtaposing the natural and the industrial worlds. Trained in sculpture, fiber arts, and dance, Hassinger was part of an influential experimental Los Angeles–based community of artists that included Senga Nengudi and David Hammons and focused on improvisational and collective performance. Hassinger’s diverse output encompasses installation, video, performance, and sculpture, and considers social and environmental issues.

For her AAM Roof Deck Sculpture Garden exhibition Nature, Sweet Nature, Hassinger presents two site-specific wire and concrete works that mimic verdant forms and engage with the outdoor environment. The piece Garden is installed in the museum’s roof deck planters and appears like a wild unraveled vine amid the decorative flowers and bushes. Placed in this location, the work’s human-scale wire pieces appear to overrun the planters even as they are contained by them. In Hassinger’s work Paradise Regained, thick wire strands lean in rows, like planted grasses or reeds bent by the wind. Using ordinary materials in uncanny ways, Hassinger creates dynamic works that ask her viewers to be more reflective about their surroundings.

This exhibition is curated by Simone Krug, Assistant Curator.

Read the transcript of exhibiting artist Maren Hassinger’s conversation with AAM curator Simone Krug and Lowery Stokes Sims from a video conference held in advance of Nature, Sweet Nature.

On Art and Collaboration: Artist Talk with Maren Hassinger and Senga Nengudi—Hirshhorn Museum

Watch a recent conversation between artists Maren Hassinger and Senga Nengudi conducted as part of the Hirshhorn Museum’s #HirshhornInsideOut series. Learn more about how the artists view their collaboration of movement and performance centered around Nengudi’s R.S.V.P. sculptures below.