ANNA HEPLER
Through September 2

Anna Hepler (ME) has long been investigating the intersections of line and space in her drawings and prints with what might be described as an intuitive geometry. In a significant turn, Hepler now undertakes three-dimensional investigations of line and space. Using found plastic sheeting and tape, she constructs balloon-like forms that slowly inflate and deflate. Hepler describes these works as, at once, sculptural diagrams and spatial drawings.

Using what she describes as intuitive geometry, Hepler has long investigated the intersections of line and space. Turning her interests now to the three-dimensional in Collapse, Hepler uses found plastic sheeting and tape to create a structure that slowly inflates and deflates over the course of approximately thirty minutes. Hepler describes this work as, at once, a sculptural diagram and a spatial drawing. The artist writes: “Like a living thing, Collapse is restless in its ever shifting form and in the transition it undergoes between a kind of linear chaos (when the piece is deflated) and sublime geometry (when it reaches full inflation). The title comes from that moment when the blower shuts off and the form exhales, collapsing into a chaos of twisted and overlapping lines.”

Overlaying Collapse’s semitransparent, white-plastic skin is a black grid made with packing tape. In addition to binding the work together, the pattern references Modernism’s reverence of the grid: the ultimate in rational organizational structures. Clearly handmade, expressive, and anything but rigid, Collapse effectively undermines the formality of the grid and defines “linear” on new terms.