Kunsthalle Düsseldorf
In fall/winter 2024/25, the Josef Albers Museum Quadrat Bottrop and the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf will present the first large-scale solo exhibition of American artist Sheila Hicks (*1934) in Germany.
Sheila Hicks' unique body of work unfolds in the interplay between material, color and space: in large- and small-format wall works, tapestries, reliefs, sculptures and installations, the seemingly endless possibilities of these three dimensions fan out. "What can you do with a thread?" is the question the artist has tirelessly pursued since studying with Josef Albers at the Yale School of Art in the 1950s. In her pursuit, she tests a wide range of techniques that constantly challenge and surprise our perception and our concepts of art and textiles, color and texture, work and space.
At the two venues, the Josef Albers Museum in Bottrop and the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, the exhibition presents the artist's entire oeuvre: The Josef Albers Museum presents a retrospective on about 700 square meters of the award-winning Gigon/Guyer extension. It brings together works from the period from 1955 to 2024, including never-before-seen early paintings from her student days at Josef Albers. Early textile works, works from her time in Chile, Mexico and Morocco, designs for large architecture-related commissions and her more recent colorful wall objects, sculptures and installations will also be on view and will be complemented by sketches and materials from the artist's archive. The Kunsthalle Düsseldorf will then show a more comprehensive view of Sheila Hicks' current artistic output: large-format, partly site-specific installations and sculptures unfold their intense power in contrast to the brutalist architecture of the exhibition halls and also display the artist's latest material and form experiments.
With more than 250 works from all creative periods, the cooperative exhibition brings, for the first time in Germany, a comprehensive overview of the 90-year-old artist's multifaceted work. The exhibition runs through Feb. 23, 2025.
