Louise Bourgeois's Art Can Still Enthrall

"It's a credit to Louise Bourgeois that her art can still surprise. For much of her career, the French-born, New York-based artist showed only sporadically-until the Museum of Modern Art gave her a retrospective, in 1982, when she was seventy. After that, and especially since her death, in 2010, Bourgeois has become a household name, and her art a familiar presence. Yet even acolytes of her psychologically freighted sculptures, drawings, and prints may find new revelation in "Gathering Wool," an exhibition at Hauser & Wirth (through April 18) focussed on her late abstractions."

"The first room provides the show's aesthetic apex. It's dominated by the huge installation "Twosome" (1991), in which a black tank hums while slowly moving in and out of a larger one, with a flashing red light inside. A nearby screen plays a clip, from a 1978 performance, of Suzan Cooper strutting among Bourgeois's sculptures and gutturally singing a song about being abandoned. The themes here are classically Bourgeoisian-human interdependence and the difficulty of uncoupling-but the contrast of austere kineticism with raw emotion is unusual and enthralling."

Gathering Wool at Hauser & Wirth focuses on Louise Bourgeois's late abstractions and runs through April 18. The ground floor centers on bold installations such as Twosome (1991), featuring a black tank that hums and moves in and out of a larger tank while a flashing red light pulses. A performance clip of Suzan Cooper amplifies themes of abandonment, interdependence, and the difficulty of uncoupling. The titular 1990 installation assembles seven oversized wooden balls before a metal screen. The fifth floor presents modest sculptures and works on paper that emphasize obsessive repetition and reveal intimate details like marble eggs hidden in weathered crates.

Read at The New Yorker