Susan Inglett Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Maren Hassinger, Blanket of Branches, on view from 12 September through 17 October 2026. An opening reception for the artist will be held on Saturday, 12 September 2026, from 2 to 4 PM. Susan Inglett Gallery will host a book signing event on Saturday, 26 September 2026, with Maren Hassinger, during which copies of her retrospective catalog will be available for purchase. This exhibition runs concurrently with her career retrospective, Maren Hassinger: Living Moving Growing, on view at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive through 29 November 2026, and traveling through 2029.
Blanket of Branches resurrects the titular, archival work that blurs the binary of interior and exterior space. Originally created for the Contemporary Arts Forum in Santa Barbara, CA, the work has taken on various forms, including versions shown in exhibitions at the Maryland Institute College of Art, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, and most recently in Groundswell: Women of Land Art at the Nasher Sculpture Center. The exhibition assembled female artists who were pioneers in artistic engagements with landscape-centric, experiential work.
Hassinger’s Blanket of Branches introduces nature into the traditional gallery setting by suspending a web of branches from the gallery ceiling, creating a tranquil woodland within the white box. Echoes of Hassinger’s seminal 1981 installation for LACMA, On Dangerous Ground, can be seen here, an installation that will find new life at the Gallery’s presentation at The ADAA Fair in November 2026. Hassinger’s use of wire rope to imitate nature crowded the small gallery with over a dozen wire bushes and wall works, articulating her uncertain experience of the institutional setting as a woman of color. The work’s barren branches carry a similar tenuousness, but the warm wood tones and the quality of dappled light thrown onto the floor and walls temper this uncertainty, instead conjuring the peaceful reveries associated with sunlit forest clearings or trellised pavilions.
Blanket of Branches is complemented by a series of Hassinger’s signature Vessels, positioned below the natural canopy. Iterations of the vessel have appeared in her work since 2021, leaning into the vessel's common use as a proxy for the body. Here, vessels are formed using strands of wire rope that mimic the branches overhead, woven and interlaced as though they are objects not made, but grown.
The works are made in tribute to nature’s wild beauty, simultaneously acknowledging the respite and contemplation one achieves when in communion with nature, and its unpredictable volatility. Across Hassinger’s practice, the artist seeks to remind the viewer of humanity’s enduring connection to the natural world, and the necessary symbiosis we share. Her materials suggest industry’s ever-present impact on our world, but the bare wood and steel wire converse harmoniously, reaffirming Hassinger’s core tenets of synergy and oneness.
