Louise Bourgeois at Cheim and Read

I have been wanting to share this exhibition of Louise Bourgeois: The Fabric Works that was at Cheim and Read during June, for awhile now and finally feel I have words to describe it.

I ventured into the city to knock a few shows off of my "June Exhibition Bucket List" (see previous post) and booked it straight to this show. I am happy I did, rather than wait until after I've wandered around and wasted some of my energy on shows that aren't quite as inspiring. This exhibition of Bourgeois' fabric works is a light shone on the grace and intimacy that underpin all of her works.

The Waiting Hours, suite of 12, 15 1/8 x 12 1/4", 2007. (image from Cheim and Read)

Three pages from Dawn, fabric book, 12 pages, each 12 1/4 x 9 3/4", 2006.
Detail from Untitled 2006, fabric and fabric collage.

Untitled 2010, Fabric, thread, rubber, stainless steel, wood, and glass, 78 1/2 x 87 x 43 1/4".
Eugénie Grandet, Suite of 16, mixed media on cloth, 2009.

These works, some of the last pieces she made, provoke thoughts about birth, life, womanhood, time, abandonment, and death; all of which are pervade her more well known sculptural works. The striking simplicity of the circle and oval are used in nearly each of the works presented, in various cases representative of the egg and then ovum from which we all come from. The radiating circles of the sun, Dawn recalling the web that a spider, Bourgeois' mother / spider; would create in order to sustain life; the dawning of life, of motherhood, and a new day. A similar rising sun, setting sun, and eventual rising of the moon appears in The Waiting Hours, one can't help but think of the passage of time, sitting near a large body of water tracking the movement of the sun and moon. Here, the viewer is the one gazing against an unfathomable depth of field, a watery void, watching time. The series of small mixed media pieces, reminiscent of embroidery and needlepoint samplers; that comprise Eugénie Grandet illustrate in the clearest sense, the time of a woman's body with clocks, segmented portions that form grids charting a monthly cycle, flowers, eggs and ova, all signs of fertility. Nodding to Bourgeois' sculptural work, Untitled 2010 was included and set against Untitled 2006, in the former is shown a larger version of a female torso covered with several breast forms, often seen in her bronze and stone works. There is an overwhelming sense of abandonment with this work, an unidentifiable, immobile, section of a body lies on a table, next to a standing clock like structure, with threads (hours) gently pricking into a heavy, dark wooden form. Both bodies next to each other, begging to be connected, but not, save for being in the same vitrine. Perhaps, I am projecting this feeling of abandonment because the loss of her last year still haunts.