Installation view
Artwork © Louise Bonnet
Installation view
Artwork © Louise Bonnet
Installation view
Artwork © Louise Bonnet
Installation view
Artwork © Louise Bonnet
Installation view
Artwork © Louise Bonnet
Installation view
Artwork © Louise Bonnet
Installation view
Artwork © Louise Bonnet
Installation view
Artwork © Louise Bonnet
Louise Bonnet
Kneeling Sphinx 2, 2021
Oil on linen, 30 × 40 inches (76.2 × 101.6 cm)
© Louise Bonnet. Photo: Jeff McLane
Louise Bonnet
Green Sphinx with Projections, 2021
Colored pencil on paper, 14 × 17 inches (35.6 × 43.2 cm)
© Louise Bonnet. Photo: Jeff McLane
Louise Bonnet
Heroica, 2021
Colored pencil on paper, 14 × 17 inches (35.6 × 43.2 cm)
© Louise Bonnet. Photo: Jeff McLane
Louise Bonnet
Leaking Sphinx, 2021
Colored pencil on paper, 19 × 24 inches (48.3 × 61 cm)
© Louise Bonnet. Photo: Jeff McLane
Louise Bonnet
Seated Sphinx Pink Marble, 2021
Colored pencil on paper, 24 × 19 inches (61 × 48.3 cm)
© Louise Bonnet. Photo: Jeff McLane
Louise Bonnet
Kneeling Sphinx 1, 2021
Colored pencil on paper, 19 × 24 inches (48.3 × 61 cm)
© Louise Bonnet. Photo: Jeff McLane
Louise Bonnet
Resting Sphinx Black Background, 2021
Colored pencil on paper, 24 × 19 inches (61 × 48.3 cm)
© Louise Bonnet. Photo: Jeff McLane
Louise Bonnet
Seated Green Marble, 2021
Colored pencil on paper, 24 × 19 inches (61 × 48.3 cm)
© Louise Bonnet. Photo: Jeff McLane
Louise Bonnet
Seated Sphinx Pink Marble, 2021
Colored pencil on paper, 24 × 19 inches (61 × 48.3 cm)
© Louise Bonnet. Photo: Jeff McLane
Louise Bonnet
Crouching Sphinx Red Base, 2021
Colored pencil on paper, 17 × 14 inches (43.2 × 35.6 cm)
© Louise Bonnet. Photo: Jeff McLane
Louise Bonnet
Crouching with Toes, 2021
Colored pencil on paper, 14 × 17 inches (35.6 × 43.2 cm)
© Louise Bonnet. Photo: Jeff McLane
Louise Bonnet
Green Sphinx Seated, 2021
Colored pencil on paper, 17 × 14 inches (43.2 × 35.6 cm)
© Louise Bonnet. Photo: Jeff McLane
They are in between: in between animals and humans, in between resting and pouncing, in between sleep and wakefulness. I saw myself as the viewer, trying to get past them just before they saw me.
—Louise Bonnet
Gagosian is pleased to present Sphinxes, an exhibition of new drawings and a new oil painting by Louise Bonnet. This is the first time her work has been shown in Switzerland.
Inspired by a wide variety of sources—from the old masters to Surrealism to the satirical drawings of R. Crumb—Bonnet’s exaggerated forms walk a line between the beautiful and the grotesque, and between absurdist comedy and extreme psychological and physiological tension. In these new works, she positions the female body as a guardian of power, filtering the mythical creature’s symbolic associations through contemporary perceptions of gender, sexuality, and identity. Poised to protect or slay, each of Bonnet’s contorted sphinxes is rife with latent potential.
Crouching, kneeling, or sitting on pedestals, the subjects hearken back to their historical origins as legendary fusions of woman, lion, and falcon who served as merciless gatekeepers—as seen in the Greek myth of Oedipus, who had to solve the Sphinx’s deadly riddle in order to enter the city of Thebes—or, in the Egyptian tradition, as majestic protectors of imperial tombs. Here, however, the sphinx is metamorphosed into a fully human form that combines raw power with femininity.
Ali Subotnick investigates the artist’s surreal new series of drawings.
Gagosian hosted a conversation between Louise Bonnet and Stefanie Hessler, director of Swiss Institute, New York, inside 30 Ghosts, the artist’s exhibition of new paintings at Gagosian, New York. The pair explores the work’s recurring themes—the cycles of life, continuity and the future, and death—and discuss how the conceptual and pictorial structures Bonnet borrows from seventeenth-century Dutch still-life painting converge to form a metaphor for hard labor, basic animal urges, and the things we often try, but fail, to hide.
Cultural critic Naomi Fry joined Louise Bonnet for a conversation on the occasion of Louise Bonnet Selects, a film program curated by the artist as part of a series copresented by Gagosian and Metrograph. The pair discussed how the protagonists of the seven selected films are ruled, betrayed, changed, or unsettled by their bodies, focusing on David Cronenberg’s The Brood (1979).
Join Gagosian for a panel discussion with Louise Bonnet; Johanna Burton, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and Celinda M. Vázquez, chief external affairs officer of Planned Parenthood Los Angeles (PPLA), on the occasion of Bonnet’s donation to PPLA of the proceeds from the sale of her painting Red Study (2022).
Louise Bonnet speaks with Freja Harrell about her new painting, her donation to Planned Parenthood Los Angeles, and the role of art in the fight for reproductive justice.
Poet and novelist Dodie Bellamy visits the artist Louise Bonnet at her Los Angeles studio as she prepares for an exhibition of new works in Hong Kong and the inclusion of one of her paintings in the 59th Biennale di Venezia. The two discuss the power of horror, the intensity of memory, and their creative processes.
Join Louise Bonnet in her Los Angeles studio as she works on new paintings ahead of her exhibition Onslaught, at Gagosian, Hong Kong.
The Summer 2022 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, with two different covers—featuring Takashi Murakami’s 108 Bonnō MURAKAMI.FLOWERS (2022) and Andreas Gursky’s V & R II (2022).
The artist describes her new body of work from her Los Angeles studio.
Los Angeles painter Louise Bonnet reminisces about the films that influenced her development as an artist.
Filmmaker and author Miranda July joined Louise Bonnet on a video call to discuss life during lockdown, the luminosity of oil paint, and Bonnet’s forthcoming exhibition of new work. Longtime friends—and newly neighbors—the two reflect on their shared history and shared interests in the unconscious, vagueness, and the mixture of humor and pain.
