A retrospective of Sheila Hicks’s unique work “Lignes de Vie”, on display at the Pompidou Centre until 30 April 2018.
Sheila Hicks is an American artist, born in Nebraska in 1934. She studied at Yale University, where she was a pupil of Josef Albers, a painter and colour theorist. She later encountered Latin America and fell in love with Pre-Columbian textiles.
As a result, since the late 1950’s, Sheila Hicks has been producing works impossible to categorise, mixing colour, materials and craftsmanship in homage to her mentor and her discoveries.
But be aware, Sheila Hicks is not a classical artist. She chooses to use textiles rather than solid materials to create her sculptures, knotting, wrapping, folding, twisting and stacking wool, linen or cotton. She undermines artistic categories and their agreed hierarchies.
In this exhibition, there is not a narrative for each work. Sheila Hicks has her own narrative and wants all of us to create one of our own when we look at her sculptures. Sculptures, that is, not works, as this is the terminology she prefers. Sheila Hicks doesn’t consider herself an art historian. Her interest is in emotional ideas.
This exhibition unites forms typical of modernism and non-Western traditions and the play of colour and textiles.
Balsan simply had to hold an Artistic Encounter around this event, which is so perfectly in line with our vocation as a creator of textile flooring.
The “Lignes de Vie” exhibition, looking back at the career of artist Sheila Hicks is on display at the Centre Georges Pompidou until 30 April 2018.
