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Bourgeois’ new works express both fragility and anxiety, and ultimately optimism. As is typical of her art, they seek a reconciliation of opposites, of hard with soft, geometric with organic, enigma with familiarity, and trauma with restoration: ‘I am trying to seek a balance between the extremes that I feel. I want to be reasonable.’ A series of standing sculptures (all 2007) continue the processing of the contents of her wardrobe as raw materials, a practice begun by the artist in the mid-nineties. In these new works, Bourgeois has re-stitched, draped and stuffed her clothes to create abstract forms, which she has then cast in bronze and painted. The resulting works are reminiscent of her early personages of the 1940s and 1950s. Bourgeois sees the folds, knots and orifices of these bronzes as suggestive of maternal nurturing and warmth, yet the sculptures’ whiteness and extremes of shape are also unsettling.

Untitled 2007
Bronze painted white, steel
233.6 X 48.2 X 30.4cm
Louise Bourgeois

Hauser & Wirth also exhibited Nothing to Remember (2004 – 2006), two 22 page portfolios of coloured images and text on top of hand-drawn music manuscript paper. It followed from an earlier book, Ode à l ‘Oubli (Ode to Forgetfulness), which Bourgeois made entirely out of fabric, using the linens and clothing remnants from her past. The words and images in Nothing to Remember are tentative and delicate, conveying the significance and fleetingness of memories.


http://www.hauserwirth.com