Louise Bourgeois - The Fabric Works 5th Nov 2010 HAUSER & WIRTH London

Conscious and Unconscious, 2008
White oak, glass and stainless steel vitrine
224.8 x 167.6 x 94 cm / 88 1/2 x 66 x 37 in 

Feminine, heartful, emotional, proud, beautiful, honest, powerful...  

Those are some of the fabric works of Louise Bourgeois, there are around 70 pieces of work at the gallery made in the last years of her life. I can't believe how important is what I have in front of my eyes, this is a very important moment for future women artists, I feel confident and inspired. 

Using her own garments of a whole life and household items such as tablecloths, napkins and bed linen she composes beautiful compositions, getting more abstract as the time pass by. They are all displayed in collections arranged by colours, patterns or materials. Some of them form shapes like diamonds or kaleidoscopes, they invite you to get closer to the work, it is almost like a magnetic or a cob web that it is almost trapping you in or making you to get lost in it. 

I can feel a lot of proud in this exhibition, I feel Bourgeois relaxed here like if everything she had to do it was already done,  and what best material than fabrics to conclude a whole life of trying to be heard, Sewing something so feminine it is again in a well-known Art gallery, and that makes me think that things are changing for good. 

Three other pieces are in the gallery, one of her "Maman" spiders, "Peaux de Lapins, Chiffons Ferrailles À Vendre" (2006) and "Conscious and Unconscious"(2008) (see above). The contrast between fabrics and hard materials in those sculptures are confronting me, all of the pieces are highly charged with energy, I will say the sculptures are quite strong and they represent a painful experience for the artist. 

I'm particularly drawn to "Conscious and Unconscious". I feel that both the conscious and the unconscious are both painful to deal for the artist. The conscious shows a blue plastic object which I take this as a representation of the artist's brain with needles stucked on it . The unconscious is formed by white fabric stuffed objects covered with knitted or crocheted white cotton. This again it represents to me the artist brain or brains. The way are displayed one on top of each other it gives the feeling that the unconscious is heavy to handle. It gets heavier and heavier as the objects grows bigger. The unconscious depiction in the work is however stronger and perhaps more meaningful than the conscious. and knowing that the unconscious has always being a starting point for the artist in her work, it doesn't surprised me at all.