Spanning over five decades, Maren Hassinger’s practice integrates performance, sculpture, fiber arts, and installation, often blurring the boundaries between these mediums. The artist’s signature use of industrial wire rope began in the 1970s—while pursuing her master’s degree in fiber structure at the University of California, Los Angeles—when she encountered the material in a junkyard. Since then, she has consistently manipulated the material to both physically and conceptually tease out its organic attributes. Now at Dia Beacon, exhibited for the first time in nearly 40 years and in its never-before-seen entirety of 182 components, Field (1983) articulates Hassinger’s central formal and conceptual concerns. Comprised of wire-rope bundles meticulously unraveled to resemble feathered metal stalks planted in cement bases, the piece evokes, in the artist’s words, an “industrial field” where human-made products emulate nature in its absence, beckoning a reconsideration of one’s relationship with organic forms across both natural and built environments.

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