Woven wonder: Sheila Hicks shows no signs of slowing with new works

Few artists entering their ninth decade can claim to have their work celebrated at four different venues from here to Espace Louis Vuitton in Munich, the Contemporary Art Museum St Louis and Davis & Langdale simultaneously. Far more than fifty solo exhibitions over the past 20 years celebrate Hick’s distinctive oeuvre in which she weaves wondrous works that cross over into sculpture, installation art and design as well. Now the Chelsea gallery Sikkima Jenkins & Co. in New York is presenting ‘Sheila Hicks’, which features 26 examples spanning the past seven years.

Hicks has reconfigured her acclaimed piece,The Treaty of Chromatic Zones, a monumental bas-relief of towering bamboo poles wrapped, twisted and stacked with linen and silk yarn in vibrant hues of turquoise, magenta, lavender and tobacco brown - some embedded with slivers of slate - which she showed at Art Basel this June. Her 2014 Almost 150 Delegates at the Treaty Table consists of 147 poles stretching ten feet wide.

‘For over 50 years Sheila has constantly explored new ways of interpreting woven materials,’ says Brent Sikkema. ‘While nearly unrecognizable now, her White River (Fleuve Blanc) from 2013 started as yards and yards of simple rope. But through a simple –yet labor intensive - alteration and hanging the material from the ceiling, she has created this magnificent cascading sculpture,’ he adds.

Also on view are Hicks’ intimately scaled hand-woven works created continuously over the entirety of her career, which she refers to as minimes. Frequently produced on small hand held looms, which she routinely carries on jets crisscrossing the Atlantic and on to China, her minimes reflect the same level of intrigue.