While the major exhibition Louise Bourgeois is still on view at the Guggenheim, a display of recent sculptures and gouaches by the Season 2 artist recently opened at Cheim & Read. The sculptures, entitled Echo, date from 2007 and are anthropomorphous like the artist’s early Personages of the 1940s and 1950s. “Cast from discarded clothing that Bourgeois has variously stretched, sewn, draped and piled into abstract, organic forms, the bronzes are then painted white to give a ghostly aura to the textured surfaces.” Bourgeois began using her clothing as material for her art in the mid-1990s.
Also dating from 2007, Bourgeois’s gouaches depict the processes of motherhood, from conception and pregnancy to birth and beyond. Her blood red paint is “at once bodily and ethereal—the paint, applied ‘wet-on-wet,’ was allowed to bleed and coalesce, leaving a range of organic, accidental marks that complement the corporeal nature of the imagery.” Read the complete press release here.
Echo, on view through November 1, is accompanied by a full-color catalogue with writings by the artist and an essay by Dave Hickey.