Louise Bourgeois
dal 13/10/2010 al 17/12/2010
Segnalato da
13/10/2010
Louise Bourgeois
Hauser & Wirth - Savile Row, London
The Fabric Works. The exhibition features over seventy fabric drawings made between 2002 and 2008, as well as four large-scale sculptures. Made from clothes and other domestic effects accrued over decades, Bourgeois's fabric drawings are abstract yet acutely personal works, retaining allusions to the materials' past incarnations. Fabric has played an important role in Bourgeois's life. She grew up surrounded by the textiles of her parents' tapestry restoration workshop, and from the age of twelve helped the business by drawing in the sections of the missing parts that were to be repaired. Curated by Germano Celant.
Curated by Germano Celant
Hauser & Wirth is proud to announce the inauguration of its new space at 23 Savile Row with a solo exhibition
by Louise Bourgeois. The exhibition features over seventy fabric drawings made between 2002 and 2008,
as well as four large-scale sculptures. Made from clothes and other domestic effects accrued over decades,
Bourgeois's fabric drawings are abstract yet
acutely personal works, retaining allusions to the
materials' past incarnations. Curated by Germano
Celant, the exhibition comes to Hauser & Wirth
London from the Fondazione Emilio e Annabianca
Vedova, Venice. The exhibition is accompanied
by a substantial catalogue published by Skira,
which focuses on this major aspect of Bourgeois's
practice.
Fabric has played an important role in Bourgeois's life.
She grew up surrounded by the textiles of her parents'
tapestry restoration workshop, and from the age of
twelve helped the business by drawing in the sections
of the missing parts that were to be repaired. A life-
long hoarder of clothes and household items such
as tablecloths, napkins and bed linen, since the mid-
nineties, Bourgeois has cut up and re-stitched these,
transforming her lived materials into art. Through sewing
she has attempted to effect psychological repair: 'I
always had the fear of being separated and abandoned.
The sewing is my attempt to keep things together and
make things whole'.
The fabric drawings are abstract and heterogeneous,
deriving their formal logic from the juxtapositions of
patterns printed on their materials and the artist's long-
standing motifs. Over a six-year period their designs
have evolved, exploring more intricate geometries
and increasingly incorporating collaged elements.
Stripy and chequered drawings that Bourgeois began
making in 2002 weave thin strips of her garments
together, bending the modernist grid. Later works
adopt polygonal structures, stitching the fabrics so
that the patterns form concentric circles and spirals
similar to spider webs and the vibrant mirrorings of
a kaleidoscope. Rather than being minimalist, these
morphing geometries are supple and embracive, softly
corporeal.
In juxtaposition to the drawings are three-dimensional
pieces articulating an inescapable menace. The Cell,
'Bullet Hole' (1992), a black half-open, half-closed
structure housing mysterious wooden orbs, bears the
message 'Fear makes the world go round'. 'Peaux
de Lapins, Chiffons Ferrailles À Vendre' (2006), refers
through its title to the traditional song of the street
peddlers Bourgeois remembered from her childhood,
yet its elements are unsettling: flesh-coloured forms
hanging within a wire mesh resemble body parts —
perhaps breasts or uteri or male genitalia – without
being clear precisely which. Such suggestive ambiguity
is typical of Bourgeois's sculptures, enabling one thing
to slip into and signify another, disturbing the viewers'
conceptions. This is particularly true of 'Crouching
Spider' (2003), a key figure in this exhibition. Ferocious
looking, the spider is also a creature who protects and
repairs. In the earlier work 'Maman' (1999) Bourgeois
explicitly used the spider as a metaphor for her mother
who was an expert at spinning and weaving. Yet here
amongst the wealth of woven, frequently web-like
fabric drawings it's clear that its symbolic reach goes
further, standing for the artist herself.
For over seventy years she has submitted her psychic life to intense examination, transforming her thoughts and
emotions into a body of work of startling formal complexity. An extraordinarily radical and influential artist, her reputation
as the most important female artist of our times was consolidated by an extensive retrospective of her work shown at
Tate Modern (2007 – 2008) that toured to the Centre
Pompidou, Paris, the Guggenheim Museum, New York,
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and the
Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden, Washington
DC until May 2009. A major solo exhibition, 'Louise
Bourgeois: The Return of the Repressed', will take place
in South America in 2011, opening at Fundación Proa,
Buenos Aires, in March and travelling to Instituto Tomie
Ohtake, São Paolo, and Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de
Janeiro.
This exhibition will also mark the opening of Hauser & Wirth's new space at 23 Savile Row. Offering 15,000 square feet
of exhibition space, the gallery provides an outstanding setting for larger exhibitions and more expansive installations.
In addition, 7,000 square feet of the building's first floor will be developed for new offices and an extensive library and
archive.
23 Savile Row will be in addition to Hauser & Wirth's existing operations at 196A Piccadilly and 15 Old Bond Street,
as well as Hauser & Wirth's Outdoor Sculpture programme in Southwood Garden, St James's Church. The new
space has been developed by architect Annabelle Selldorf, whose previous projects include Hauser & Wirth's existing
galleries in London, Zurich and New York, the Neue Galerie, New York, and the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute,
Williamstown.
Press Contact: Catherine Mason
catherine@suttonpr.com
Image: Louise Bourgeois, Untitled 2007
© Louise Bourgeois Trust
Courtesy Hauser & Wirth
Photo: Christopher Burke
Opening Thursday 14 October 2010, 6-8 pm
Hauser & Wirth London, Savile Row
23 Savile Row - London
Gallery hours: Tuesday to Saturday, 10 am - 6 pm
admission free