Maren Hassinger: Fight the Power and Other Tales of Survival

Marren Hassinger’s primarily site-specific works create introspective spaces that oftentimes surround the viewer’s visual field with coexisting signs of his or her connection to nature and ability to devastate it. Labor-intensive to create yet appearing soft and even fragile, the sculptures seem to embrace their own paradoxes and dichotomies to remind the viewer of the conflicts inherent in the everyday world, including that between order and chaos. The resulting works can suggest nature’s instinct toward survival.

Maren Hassinger received her BA in Sculpture from Bennington College in 1969 and her MFA from UCLA in 1973. She is director of the Rinehart School of Sculpture at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). Hassinger’s work is included in the permanent collections of the Hammer Museum, the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture, the California African American Museum, the Portland Museum of Art, The Studio Museum, Williams College Art Museum, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Recent exhibitions included Magnetic Fields at the National Museum of Women in the Arts and We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1968-85 at the Brooklyn Museum and traveling to CAAM in Los Angeles, Albright Knox in Buffalo, and the ICA in Boston.


The Intra-Disciplinary Seminar (IDS) Public Lecture Series, designed as an introduction to some of the most pressing questions driving contemporary thought and practice, consists of lectures by artists, theorists, activists, designers, writers, curators, and other practitioners involved in the arts from positions that embody an interdisciplinary approach or that imply new uses for disciplinary traditions.

This year’s series is organized along three general directions: “Open Space: Building”, where we look at the social function of architecture, and how people move through space or build physical or symbolic spaces. “Open Image: Thresholds of Form”, where we think about the practice of image making, as well as the perception and interpretation of aesthetic production. “Open Methods: The (Post-)Colonial Contemporary”, where we wonder how to theorize the present moment, with regard to its political and ethical dimensions. IDS is organized by Leslie Hewitt, assistant professor at the School of Art of The Cooper Union, and Omar Berrada the director of Dar al-Ma’mûn, a library and artists’ residency in Marrakech and an adjunct instructor at The Cooper Union.











When: Mon., Feb. 5, 2018 at 7:00 pm
Where: The Cooper Union
7 E. 7th St. | 41 Cooper Sq.
212-353-4100
Price: Free
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Marren Hassinger’s primarily site-specific works create introspective spaces that oftentimes surround the viewer’s visual field with coexisting signs of his or her connection to nature and ability to devastate it. Labor-intensive to create yet appearing soft and even fragile, the sculptures seem to embrace their own paradoxes and dichotomies to remind the viewer of the conflicts inherent in the everyday world, including that between order and chaos. The resulting works can suggest nature’s instinct toward survival.

Maren Hassinger received her BA in Sculpture from Bennington College in 1969 and her MFA from UCLA in 1973. She is director of the Rinehart School of Sculpture at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). Hassinger’s work is included in the permanent collections of the Hammer Museum, the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture, the California African American Museum, the Portland Museum of Art, The Studio Museum, Williams College Art Museum, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Recent exhibitions included Magnetic Fields at the National Museum of Women in the Arts and We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1968-85 at the Brooklyn Museum and traveling to CAAM in Los Angeles, Albright Knox in Buffalo, and the ICA in Boston.


The Intra-Disciplinary Seminar (IDS) Public Lecture Series, designed as an introduction to some of the most pressing questions driving contemporary thought and practice, consists of lectures by artists, theorists, activists, designers, writers, curators, and other practitioners involved in the arts from positions that embody an interdisciplinary approach or that imply new uses for disciplinary traditions.

This year’s series is organized along three general directions: “Open Space: Building”, where we look at the social function of architecture, and how people move through space or build physical or symbolic spaces. “Open Image: Thresholds of Form”, where we think about the practice of image making, as well as the perception and interpretation of aesthetic production. “Open Methods: The (Post-)Colonial Contemporary”, where we wonder how to theorize the present moment, with regard to its political and ethical dimensions. IDS is organized by Leslie Hewitt, assistant professor at the School of Art of The Cooper Union, and Omar Berrada the director of Dar al-Ma’mûn, a library and artists’ residency in Marrakech and an adjunct instructor at The Cooper Union.

Buy tickets/get more info now