For the exhibition of Contingent at the Finch College Museum of Art, Eva Hesse wrote the following catalogue statement:
Hanging.
Rubberised, loose, open cloth.
Fiberglass-reinforced plastic.
Began somewhere in November-December, 1968.
Worked.
Collapsed April 6, 1969. I have been very ill.
Statement.
Resuming work on piece,
have one complete from back then.
Statement, October 15, 1969, out of hospital, short stay this time,
third time.
Same day students and Douglas Johns began work.
MORATORIUM DAY
Piece is in many parts.
Each in itself is a complete statement,
together am not certain how it will be.
A fact. I cannot be certain yet.
Can be from illness, can be from honesty
irregular, edges, six to seven feet long.
textures coarse, rough, changing.
see through, non see through, consistent, inconsistent.
enclosed tightly by glass like encasement just hanging there.
then more, others, will they hang there in the same way?
try a continuous flowing one.
try some random closely spaced.
try some distant far spaced.
they are tight and formal but very ethereal, sensitive, fragile.
see through mostly
not painting, not sculpture, it’s there though.
I remember I wanted to get to non art, non connotive,
non anthropomorphic, non geometric, non, nothing,
everything, but of another kind, vision, sort.
from a total other reference point, is it possible?
I have learned anything is possible, I know that.
that vision or concept will come through total risk, freedom, discipline.
I will do it.
today another step, on two sheets we put on the glass.
did the two differently
one was cast-poured over hard, irregular, thick plastic;
one with screening, crumpled, they will all be different.
both the rubber sheets and the fiberglass.
lengths and widths.
question how and why in putting it together?
can it be different each time? why not?
how to achieve by not achieving? how to make by not making?
it’s all in that.
it’s not the new, it is what is yet not known,
thought, seen, touched but really what is not.
and that is.