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路易丝•布尔乔亚
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向路易丝•布尔乔亚致敬：
林天苗、胡晓媛
2011年6月4日至8月28日
开幕酒会：2011年6月4日，周六，晚6-8点
上海James Cohan画廊
地址：徐汇区岳阳路170弄1号楼1楼，近永嘉路
上海James Cohan画廊荣幸地宣布路易丝•布尔乔亚（Louise Bourgeois）展览将于2011年6月4日开幕，并将持续到8月28日。展览将推出由纽约著名版画工作室Harlan & Weaver于1999年至2009年间印制的三十三件铜版作品；这些精彩的作品同时也展现了布尔乔亚与印刷大师Felix Harlan和Carol Weaver自1989年始长达21年紧密、多产的合作关系。他们一同工作直至2010年5月艺术家于98岁高龄去世。
路易丝•布尔乔亚（1911-2010）出生于巴黎，曾就学于索邦大学、卢浮宫学院和法国高等美术学院。1938年，她跟随丈夫，艺术史学家、策展人Robert Goldwater搬至纽约生活，并于1955年加入美国国籍。以雕塑、绘画及版画创作而知名的布尔乔亚，在其漫长的职业生涯中成名较晚，直至1982年，当她七十多岁时，在纽约现代艺术博物馆（MoMA）举办的个人回顾展，才为她带来了长久未有的肯定、褒奖和声誉。1993年，布尔乔亚代表美国国家馆参加威尼斯双年展。
自1940年代起，版画创作就一直是艺术家工作中至关重要的部分。如同她的雕塑作品，版画作品中的主题与图像亦都富于强烈的情感与心理内容并充满了个人印记，亲密关系、个体记忆、家庭、童年与母性——以及这些关系中与生俱来的冲突、分离与调和，及由此而产生的焦虑，这些主题反复出现，并贯穿在她的所有作品中。如同Felix Harlan所描述的：“布尔乔亚的版画作品是在她的智识与情感领域中自由创造出来的。铜版画给她提供了一种手段，得以将她认为重要的图像创作并保存下来……版画创作变成了日常活动，为了描绘出不同的想法，她总是在多个印版上同时创作，尽管并非所有的印版都会完成。”而布尔乔亚也经常说：“绘画无关紧要，制成印版的才重要。”于艺术家而言，蚀刻过程和制作中涉及的工序及材料（铜版、及使用工具在铜版上雕刻、划刮及磨光）的物理性，与雕塑创作有着根本上的内在联系。
本次展览着重推出了在艺术家的创作中为人熟知的诸多图像和主题，如《蜘蛛女人》（2005），《愤怒的猫》（1999）以及《悬挂的人形》（2000）。同时展出的有名为《修复》（2003）的一套版画，包含七件作品，这套充满象征性的作品根植于艺术家的个人经历，少女时期在法国从事挂毯修复生意的家庭中度过的青春期记忆。这套版画的题目具有双重意义，既表现了布尔乔亚童年时期在家庭生活中所经历的痛苦的情感挣¬¬¬扎：其父亲对于家庭的背叛及她与母亲之间的复杂关系，亦反映了修复17、18世纪纺织品的艰辛——布尔乔亚从15岁起就参与到父母的修复工作中去了。
为了使展览内容更为丰满，同时表达对布尔乔亚的悼念与敬意，我们邀请并展出了艺术家林天苗与胡晓媛的两件雕塑作品。布尔乔亚的作品对许多年轻一代的艺术家产生了巨大影响，并得到了他们的深深敬仰，尤其是女性艺术家。林天苗（生于1966年）与胡晓媛（生于1977年）是中国当下非常活跃的两位女性艺术家。林天苗的作品被纽约现代艺术博物馆、旧金山现代艺术博物馆、西雅图艺术博物馆、新加坡艺术博物馆与堪培拉澳洲国立美术馆等艺术机构展出与收藏。胡晓媛的作品于2008年在伯尔尼美术馆、于2007年在第12届德国卡塞尔文献展展出，最近参与的群展是上海当代艺术馆（MoCA）2010年展览“弦外”。
林天苗的《妈的！！！- No.1狗》（2008），是其大型装置作品中的主要作品，在北京长征空间首次展出。该雕塑作品由白色聚脲、丝绸、丝线与棉线组成，似纵欲、仰卧的无头女性裸体雕塑，缠绕于丝绸间，两侧有两条胁迫的灰狗。梦幻而古典的作品造型，传达出的却是艺术家对于女性之痛苦与脆弱的矛盾挣扎。胡晓媛的最新雕塑作品以《忽略从未停止，一如河流》为题，题目引自俄国作家亚历山大•索尔仁尼琴的访谈；胡晓媛将一张旧的普通金属写字台重新创作成了一组桌面静物。这件雕塑作品由多种材质组成，气球、卫生纸纸浆、蛇蜕、风干的蜂房、装满蝉蜕的有镜面的盒子、一抽屉由卫生纸纸浆翻制的（以艺术家自身身体尺寸和比例为模板）人体骨骼。于胡晓媛而言，每个物件都是过去存在的遗留物；一段关于被蜕下、被抛弃的记忆。蝉蜕、蛇蜕、蜂巢，在那生的意味中又暗含着形而上的死的暗示，脆弱而易被忽略；而这同时却也暗示着转变新生的潜在可能，蕴育着欲望与新的生命，转换永不停止，如同河流一般。
更多信息或图片，请联系 周冰心 izhou@jamescohan.com 或 +86-21-54660825。画廊工作时间：周二至周六，上午10点至晚6点，周日中午12点至晚6点，周一请预约。
LOUISE BOURGEOIS
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A Tribute to Louise Bourgeois:
Lin Tian Miao, Hu Xiaoyuan
June 4 through August 28, 2011
Opening reception: June 4th, 2011, Saturday, 6 to 8 pm
Venue: James Cohan Gallery Shanghai
Address: 1/F, Building 1, Lane 1, No.170 Yue Yang Road, Shanghai
James Cohan Gallery Shanghai is pleased to announce the exhibition Louise Bourgeois, opening June 4 and continuing through August 28, 2011. The exhibition will feature thirty-three etching and intaglio works dating from 1999 to 2009 that were printed by the renowned print atelier Harlan & Weaver based in New York City. This exhibition also hallmarks Bourgeois’s long and intensely productive 21-year relationship with master printers Felix Harlan and Carol Weaver, which began in1989. They continued working together until the artist’s death last year, in May 2010, at the age of 98.
Born in Paris, Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010) studied at the Sorbonne, the Ecole du Louvre and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts prior to moving to New York in 1938 with her husband Robert Goldwater, who was an art historian and curator. She became an American citizen in 1955. Known throughout the world for her sculptures, drawings and prints, Bourgeois came to fame late in her long career. Her major 1982 retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York brought Bourgeois, then in her early 70s, the critical acclaim, praise and popularity which had long eluded her. In 1993 she represented the United States at the Venice Biennale.
Printmaking had always been a central and important part of the artist’s work since the 1940s. Like her sculptures, the subject matter and imagery in her prints are emotionally and psychologically charged and personally emblematic. Reexhibitions themes of intimate relationships, personal memories, family, childhood and motherhood—and the anxiety of separation and reconciliation inherent to them—appear consistently throughout her works. As Felix Harlan has written, “her prints operated freely within her intellectual and emotional realm. The etchings provided a way of giving permanence to certain images she considered important… At times, printmaking became a daily activity, often working on several plates at once, in order to sketch out different ideas, though not all of the images were completed.” Bourgeois, in turn, often said, “The drawing is unimportant; it’s what goes into the plate that counts.” For Bourgeois the etching process and the physicality of its activity and materials—copper plates, using the tools in which to engrave, scratch, and burnish—shared an innate relationship to making sculpture.
This exhibition features the artist’s well-known images and themes, such as Spider Woman (2005), The Angry Cat (1999), and Hanging Figure (2000). Also on view is the portfolio La Reparation (2003) consisting of seven works that dwell symbolically into the artist’s personal history and the memory of her adolescence growing up in her parent’s tapestry restoration business in France. The portfolio’s title, with its double entendre, reflects on the painful emotional struggles Bourgeois experienced in her childhood home: the conspicuous infidelity of her father; her complex relationship with her mother, and the painstaking restoration process of 17th and 18th century textiles that, by the age of fifteen, she would assist in their repairs.
Complimenting this exhibition, and in tribute to Louise Bourgeois, we have invited the artists Lin Tian Miao and Hu Xiaoyuan to exhibit two sculptures. Bourgeois’s work has had a compelling influence and has been deeply admired by many younger artists, particularly women. Lin Tian Miao (b. 1961) and Hu Xiaoyuan (b. 1977) are among two of China’s most dynamic young women artists working today. Lin Tian Miao’s works have been exhibited and collected by the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, The Seattle Art Museum, The Singapore Art Museum, and The National Museum of Australia, Canberra, among others. Hu Xiaoyuan’s work has been exhibited at the Kunstmuseum, Bern in 2008, and at Documenta 12, Kassel, Germany, in 2007. Most recently her work was featured in the exhibition “Beyond the Body” at the Museum of Contemporary (MoCA) in Shanghai.
On view at the gallery will be Lin’s Mother’s!!! No.1 Dog (2008), which is a key work from her large scale installation and exhibition first presented at Long March Space in Beijing. The sculpture, made of white polyurethane, silk cloth, and silk and cotton thread, depicts a voluptuous, reclining nude female figure, headless and swathed in silk, flanked by two menacing greyhounds. Presented as a dream-like, classical tableau, we are confronted with the artist’s conflicted sense of maternal anguish and vulnerability. In Hu Xiaoyuan’s new sculpture, titled Being Ignored Never Ends, Just Like the River, a quote taken from the Russian novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn; Hu has refashioned a common metal work table into a tabletop still life. Consisting of diverse materials, the sculpture is composed of balloons, molded from paper pulp and covered in snakeskin, dried honeycomb, a mirrored box filled with abandoned skins of cicadas, and a drawer of human bones also fabricated of paper pulp, replicating the exact size and proportions of the artist’s own body. For Hu Xiaoyuan each object is a relic of a exhibitions existence; a memory of what is shed, left behind, in which desire and new life sprout, and where decay and death seem to be in a state of neglect or being ignored, but also suggesting a potential transformation into new life, which never stops, just like a river.
For further information or additional images, please contact Ms. Ivy Zhou at izhou@jamescohan.com or +86 - 21 - 54660825. Gallery hours: Tuesday - Saturday, 10-6 p.m., Sunday 12-6 p.m., and Monday by appointment.
