february floats, Gathering Wool, répétez

Last week I saw Gathering Wool at Hauser&Wirth, a show focused on the abstract sculptural work of Louise Bourgeois.

The scale of the show was confronting. As soon as you enter the gallery, you come face to face with an enormous black steel tank with windows carved into the sides (Twosome). Looking into the windows, there is a smaller tank slowly moving in and out of the larger one and the interior is bathed in a flashing, emergent red light.

There is a transitional room between the two larger spaces that holds three pieces and wall text. The sound of the film playing in the previous area echoed through the whole space, a woman's desperate voice singing about the abandonment of a mother backed by a single violinist. Mamelles, a wall piece, spurts water into a brass basin from a row of bronze cast breasts, squeezed together in discomfort.

(Image of Mamelles from ocula.com)

are you going to abandon me

is he going

is she

are we

are you

are they

I miss my mother desperately

I was really impressed by the scale of the last space. This is where Gathering Wool resides, a circle of wooden spheres guarded by four standing panels, as well as three other sculptures. As I entered the suspense of Gathering Wool filled the room. Its presence was ancient, ruminating. I felt welcome to approach and as I did I noticed the mushrooms crawling out of the crevices of the wooden spheres.

Through the diversity of material in the show, the work extended a sense of protrusion and interiority. Hearing the trickling of water from Mamelles and inhaling the spores of mushrooms growing from the wood of Gathering Wool, I felt small among these ubiquitous objects. The curatorial text claims that Bourgeois "never privileged figuration over abstraction... and yet her relationship to abstraction has been less well defined and understood, less easily situated within the main currents of postwar art."

I didn't know much about her work or her life before seeing the show. She lost her mother in her early twenties and her father had a lengthy affair while she was young, and her work is heavily situated in the fear and anguish and lack of direction that resulted from this tumultuous upbringing. One thing we have in common is coming from and working in a family business in textiles from a young age. What I know best of hers are her looming spider sculptures (which I need to go see soon at Dia Beacon!). She was born and raised in Paris and spent most of her life in the US. I wonder what it was like to move to the US and try to establish a career.

The title and wall text are right beside the entrance and in order to take time with it, you must stand in the narrow walkway between the door and Twosome. This was really the only awkwardly located part of the show.

After researching the show to remember some of the titles I am finding out that the top floor of the gallery was a part of the same exhibition that closed before I could see it! When I visited, the top floor had a show of paintings by Qui Xiaofei that had just been installed. I did have the privilege of viewing the paintings alongside the artist giving (I believe) his family a private tour. They were speaking in Mandarin so I couldn't understand what was being said, but it was special nonetheless and made me linger a little longer.

I am not writing from the "i've been thinking about" or "i should" lens today because reflecting has been taking up too much of my time, I think. I'm feeling focused on what's in front of me today. My goals for the month of February are, to feel irrevocably inspired by going to visit a show and then to write about it, to speak a lot of french and to not spend a lot of euros (in Paris), and to make significant progress on my writing for Art Iran. Also, to grow my dictionary.

Once again!