Artist Sheila Hicks Creates Installations with Sunbrella Fiber

(PRWEB) June 23, 2014

Cascading from the ceiling of New Yorks celebrated Whitney Museum on Madison Avenue was a massive wave of pigmented fiber. A site-specific work, titled Pillar of Inquiry/Supple Column was the newest large-scale sculpture by American artist Sheila Hicks. As one of the 103 artists chosen to exhibit at the 77th Whitney Biennale* (March 7-May 25, 2014) Hicks created Pillar of inquiry/Supple Column using significant quantities of brightly colored Sunbrella material supplied by Glen Raven Custom Fabrics.

Sunbrella: The Raw Material The original, tactile Sunbrella fiber was Hicks choice because of its beauty and durability. Glen Raven Custom Fabrics, which has been manufacturing elegant, sturdy materials since 1961, prides itself on the successful production of high quality, performance fabrics for the awning, marine and upholstery markets. Temperature and weather resistant, Sunbrella fabrics have long been used for various applications for their durability and aesthetic appeal and in the design world for their malleability.

Pillar of Inquiry/Supple Column: The Whitney Museum (New York) Hicks encourages interaction with her art works. Her environmental installations blur the line between indoor and outdoor and between interior and exterior.

Pillar of Inquiry/Supple Column, an 18-foot high installation that tumbled and descended directly from the Whitney Museums grated ceiling to the floor (the building, designed by architect Marcel Breuer, will soon to be taken over by the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art), was designed by Hicks to awaken viewers appreciation and understanding of the architecture by which it is surrounded.

I want people to look at it and let their imagination soar, Hicks said. I know that the museum guards and curators frown on touching the art, but this work can really stand up to any test.

A living painting or a calligraphic sculpture, the works lively clusters of intermingled lines invite participation and reinforce the natural cohabitation of art, architecture and the humans who frequent them.

Guest Curator Michelle Grabner chose Hicks and featured her work as part of the fourth-floor exhibit.

I developed a curriculum that presents identifiable themes that are currently established in the textures of contemporary aesthetic, political, and economic realities, Grabner said. Within this curriculum, contours can be drawn around three overlapping priorities: contemporary abstract painting by women; materiality and affect theory; and art as strategyin other words, conceptual practices oriented toward criticality. Theoretically, the works that I included will each demand from the viewer a varied network of analysis.

*The 2014 Whitney Biennial was orchestrated by three curators from outside the MuseumStuart Comer (Chief Curator of Media and Performance Art at MoMA New York), Anthony Elms (Associate Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia), and Michelle Grabner (artist and Professor at the School of the Art Institute, Chicago).

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Artist Sheila Hicks Creates Installations with Sunbrella Fiber