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➤ BOURG138645, Louise Bourgeois, Untitled, 1993, Painted wood and fabric wall relief, 57.2 x 66 cm / 22 1/2 x 26 in. 67.3 x 76.2 x 8.9 cm / 26 1/2 x 30 x 3 1/2 in (framed). Photo | Christopher Burke.

Louise Bourgeois Soft Landscape

 

 

Widely recognized as one of the most important and influential artists of the past century, French-American artist  Louise Bourgeois’s work expresses a variety of emotions through a visual vocabulary of formal and symbolic  equivalents, ranging from intimate drawings to large-scale installations. Opening on 25 March, ‘Louise Bourgeois.  Soft Landscape’ explores the dynamic relationship between landscape and the human body in Bourgeois’s work.  Curated by Philip Larratt-Smith, this is her second show at Hauser & Wirth Hong Kong, and coincides with the  ongoing tour of a major survey exhibition organized by the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, which will be on view at the  Fubon Art Museum, Taipei, from 15 March to 30 June 2025. 
 
 
 
 
 
➤ BOURG138644, Louise Bourgeois, Untitled, 1993, Painted wood and fabric wall relief, 38.1 x 120 x 5.1 cm / 15 x 47 1/4 x 2 in. 48.3 x 130.2 x 17.8 cm / 19 x 51 1/4 x 7 in (framed). Photo | Sarah Muehlbauer.
➤ BOURG89684, Louise Bourgeois , Le père et les 3 fils (#3), 2006, Ink, watercolor, gouache, pencil, and etching on paper; diptych, 185.4 x 124.5 x 7.9 cm / 73 x 49 x 3 1/8 in (framed), Left sheet | 149.5 x 41.6 cm / 58 7/8 x 16 3/8 in. Right sheet | 149.2 x 41.3 cm / 58 3/4 x 16 1/4 in. Photo | Timothy Doyon.

 

 

 

 

 

Consisting of a selection of works from the 1960s up until her death in 2010, ‘Louise Bourgeois. Soft Landscape’  sets up a series of five interlocking dialogues that revolve around an iconography of nests, holes, cavities,  mounds, breasts, spirals, snakes and water. This imagery corresponds to the themes and preoccupations that  Bourgeois explored over the course of her career: the good mother, fecundity and growth, retreat and protection,  vulnerability and dependency, and the passage of time. Her forms are expressed using such diverse materials as  bronze, rubber, lead, aluminium, wood and marble. The exhibition foregrounds certain formal devices developed  by Bourgeois, such as the hanging form, the spiral and the relief. As always in her work, there is an oscillation  between abstraction and figuration.  
➤ BOURG37244, Louise Bourgeois, Lair, 1986, Rubber, hanging piece, 109.2 x 53.3 x 53.3 cm / 43 x 21 x 21 in. Photo | Christopher Burke.
➤ BOURG138628, Louise Bourgeois, Spider, 2000, Steel and marble, 52.1 x 44.5 x 53.3 cm / 20 1/2 x 17 1/2 x 21 in. Photo | Christopher Burke.
On view throughout the exhibition space are works from Bourgeois’s Lair series, first created by the artist in the  early 1960s as she emerged from a deep depression and a long immersion in psychoanalysis, which all but  replaced her artmaking for the better part of a decade. The Lair sculptures are protective places of retreat, like a  home, and convey a mood of interiority, introspection and withdrawal. Making its debut in Asia, the sculpture ‘Spider’ (2000) was loosely inspired by an ostrich egg given to the artist.  The large scale of the egg, relative to the spider that it contains, expresses the burdensome responsibilities of  motherhood. Bourgeois’s iconic spiders were conceived as an ode to her mother, yet the spider is also a self portrait; Bourgeois felt that her art came directly from her body, just as a spider spins its own web. 
 
 
 
 
 
➤ BOURG138628, Louise Bourgeois, Spider, 2000, Steel and marble, 52.1 x 44.5 x 53.3 cm / 20 1/2 x 17 1/2 x 21 in. Photo | Christopher Burke.
➤ BOURG119559, Louise Bourgeois, Untitled, 1986, Enamel, gouache, drilled holes and carving on wood, 18.7 x 14.6 x 2.9 cm / 7 3/8 x 5 3/4 x 1 1/8 in, 37.5 x 34 x 3 cm / 14 3/4 x 13 3/8 x 1 1/8 in (framed). Photo | Damian Griffiths.

 

 

 

 

A number of works that have never been exhibited before are on view in this exhibition. In one gallery, four wall  reliefs of painted wood merge landscape and biomorphic form. Bourgeois fashioned these reliefs out of the  interiors of old crates once used to transport her Personage sculptures. The way she put these wooden pieces  together created a central opening that she would sometimes populate with internal elements. The metal frames  that house these reliefs serve to make them feel more sculptural and object-like. This series of painted landscape  reliefs is complemented by a long horizontal scratchboard landscape. Here the mark making is achieved through  patiently scratching the dark-painted surface to make a delicate white line. The resulting image is a portrait of  isolation, of a world without other people. 
Also exhibited for the first time is the bronze fountain ‘Mamelles’ (1991 [cast 2005]), which consists of a long frieze  of multiple breast-like forms, with water spilling from five of the nipples into a basin below. Bourgeois – who liked  seeing how different materials could alter the meaning of her forms – also realized this sculpture in marble and  pink rubber. The endless flow and splashing of the water symbolize the passage of time, but it also represents the  good mother who provides nourishment for her children.
➤ BOURG138631, Louise Bourgeois, Landscape, 2002, Acrylic and scratched drawing on India ink prepared board, 61 x 182.9 cm / 24 x 72 in, 68.6 x 190.5 x 5.1 cm / 27 x 75 x 2 in (framed). Photo | Sarah Muehlbauer.
 
 
 
 
A pair of late works on paper similarly express the passage of time through flowing calligraphic gestures on music  paper that hover between an abstracted landscape and wave-like forms. 
Time’ (2004) belongs to a series of suites of double-sided drawings which Bourgeois made in 2003-04. The  repetitive mark-making has a meditative quality, and perhaps exerted a calming effect on the artist. The richness  emerges in the slight inflections and differences in line and texture among the sheets (there is an affinity to weaving),  and the occasional appearance of words, names and phrases that seem to surface from the unconscious. ‘Time’  (2004) has a diaristic quality, as if the artist’s pen were an instrument for registering the most minute shifts in the  artist’s thought and mood. 
 
 
 
 
 
➤ BOURG138632, Louise Bourgeois, Time, 2004, Suite of 40 double-sided mixed media drawings, Charcoal, ink, colored pencil, sanguine and pencil on paper, 24.1 x 20.3 cm / 9 1/2 x 8 in, 33.7 x 29.8 x 3.2 cm / 13 1/4 x 11 3/4 x 1 1/4 in (framed) each. Photo | Sarah Muehlbauer. All images © The Easton Foundation/VAGA at ARS, NY.
Mar 25 – Jun 21, 2025
 
Hauser & Wirth Hong Kong
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