Eröffnung: SHEILA HICKS

Openings:
Friday, October 11, 6 p.m., Kunsthalle Düsseldorf
Saturday, October 12, 2 p.m., Josef Albers Museum Quadrat Bottrop

In the fall/winter of 2024/25, the Josef Albers Museum Quadrat Bottrop and the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf will present the first major survey solo exhibition of the American artist Sheila Hicks (*1934) in Germany.

Sheila Hicks' unique oeuvre unfolds in the interplay between material, color and space: The seemingly infinite possibilities of these three dimensions fan out in large and small-format wall works, carpets, reliefs, sculptures and installations. "What can you do with a thread?" is the question that the artist has been tirelessly pursuing since her studies with Josef Albers at the Yale School of Art in the 1950s. In her pursuit, she has developed a wide variety of techniques that constantly challenge and surprise our perception and our concepts of art and textiles, color and structure, work and space.
The exhibition will present the artist's entire oeuvre at both locations, the Josef Albers Museum in Bottrop and the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf: The Josef Albers Museum will present a retrospective on around 700 square meters of the award-winning extension by Gigon/Guyer. It brings together works from the period from 1955 to 2024, including never-before-seen early paintings from her time as a student of Josef Albers. Early textile works, works from her time in Chile, Mexico and Morocco, designs for large architectural commissions and her more recent color-intensive wall objects, sculptures and installations will also be on display, supplemented by sketches and materials from the artist's archive. The Kunsthalle Düsseldorf will then present a more comprehensive view of Sheila Hicks' current artistic production: large-format, partly site-specific installations and sculptures unfold their intense power in contrast to the brutalist architecture of the exhibition spaces and also show the artist's latest experiments with materials and forms.

With a total of around 140 works from all creative periods, the cooperative exhibition brings together for the first time in Germany a comprehensive overview of the multifaceted work of the 90-year-old artist, following numerous extensive international exhibitions, including at the Centre Pompidou Malaga (2023), the Kunstmuseum Sankt Gallen (2023), the Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna (2020), the Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino, Santiago, Chile (2020) and the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, TX, USA (2019).

The exhibition is funded by the Kunststiftung NRW, the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, the Kulturstiftung der Länder and the Kulturstiftung der Sparkasse Bottrop.

The exhibition is accompanied by an extensive educational and supporting program. The exhibition will be accompanied by the first comprehensive publication on Sheila Hicks in German.