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7/7/2006

Louise Bourgeois

The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia

Recent sculpture, fabric books, and multiples.

The Fabric Workshop and Museum (FWM) is pleased to present Louise Bourgeois, a solo exhibition of work by the world-renowned artist, featuring recent sculpture, fabric books, and multiples with the costumes and video documentation from Bourgeois's 1992 FWM performance She Lost It. The exhibition will be on view from July 8 through September 16, 2006. An opening reception and preview film screening of C'est le murmure de l'eau qui chante (2002), a portrait of the artist by Brigitte Cornand, will be held at FWM on Friday, July 7 at 6 p.m., with a brief introduction by the filmmaker.

Louise Bourgeois presents a special opportunity to revisit Bourgeois's important 1992 FWM performance She Lost It through an installation of the original garments and props, and video of the performance. The exhibition will also feature recent steel and fabric sculpture, individually framed pages from the 2003 fabric book Ode a' l'Oubli, and the film Louise Bourgeois: C'est le murmure de l'eau qui chante, which will be shown at FWM on Wednesdays at noon. Additional group screenings by appointment.

During FWM's exhibition and through April 2007, Bourgeois's monumental bronze sculpture, Crouching Spider, will be on view at the east entrance of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

In 1991, FWM invited Louise Bourgeois to participate in an exhibition of artist-designed scarves. Inspired by the vastness of the 25-yard long print tables in the FWM studio, Bourgeois decided to make a "scarf" of enormous proportions. Printed with a story that she had written in 1947, the cotton gauze scarf would eventually wrap the walls of a large spiral exhibition space and became the central object in a performance entitled She Lost It, 1992.

Choreographed by the artist, the one-time performance was based on a high fashion runway show and began with "models" (FWM staff members and friends of the artist) parading across the stage wearing slips and undergarments embroidered with text written by Bourgeois. A figure enshrouded in the gauze "scarf" was slowly unwrapped so that it could be read by the audience before being rewound around an embracing couple. At the performance's end, the couple stood wrapped in Bourgeois's narrative, and the original figure was revealed as a man holding a pea.

About the Artist

Louise Bourgeois was born in Paris, and grew up working in her family's tapestry restoration shop. She studied art at many schools in Paris before immigrating to the United States in 1938, continuing her studies at the Art Students League of New York. Over 60 years, Bourgeois has established herself as one of the twentieth century's most accomplished and acclaimed sculptors, and one of the few women of her generation to gain international attention. In her work, she has consistently experimented with a range of media (rubber, stone, bronze, wood, fabric) to symbolically explore themes of a personal nature - desire, loss, cruelty, memory, sexuality, and love.

Bourgeois had her first individual exhibition in New York in 1945 (Bertha Schaefer Gallery), and since that time has had hundreds of one-person exhibitions. In 1982, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, organized a retrospective exhibition that traveled to venues throughout the United States, and in 1993, she represented the United States at the Venice Biennale. Bourgeois has been recognized with eight honorary doctoral awards, and in 1999 she received the Golden Lion award at the Venice Biennale.

The Fabric Workshop and Museum
1315 Cherry Street - Philadelphia USA
Opening hours: Monday through Friday 10 am to 6 pm; Saturdays 12 pm to 4 pm
Admission free

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