Louise Bonnet

While Bonnet’s representations of gender and bodily function exhibit a dreamlike exaggeration, they also reveal an awareness of how established artistic themes and iconographies are rendered more complex—and more troubling—by present-day associations. The flower in her painting Red Spider Lily (all works 2023), for example, functions as a symbol of separation, loss, and death, but also (as it does in China, Korea, and Nepal) of reincarnation and the afterlife. The hand in Enchanter’s Nightshade, meanwhile, connotes witchcraft and sorcery by making the “fig sign”—a gesture in which the thumb is wedged between the first two fingers—to ward off the evil eye.

Hands and (dirty) feet recur prominently throughout 30 Ghosts as metaphors for hard labor and animal urges, the foot in particular acting as a reminder that while ghosts, gods, and saints have historically been depicted as unmoored from gravity, our bodies remain firmly tethered to the earthly plane. In Lemon and Foot, the appendage is accompanied by a signifier of wealth that also offers protection from scurvy. As occurs elsewhere in Bonnet’s recent work, the legs and other parts of her figures—Pinocchio-esque extended noses included—are sheathed in pantyhose. This tight covering tints the subjects’ flesh in a way that, in conjunction with the wood blocks, emphasizes its changeable, vulnerable physicality.

The paintings in 30 Ghosts follow on from two canvases that Bonnet exhibited earlier this year in a joint intervention with her husband, ceramicist Adam Silverman, at Hollyhock House, Frank Lloyd Wright’s first major architectural project in California and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In 30 Ghosts, she again imagines a future haunted by lingering, corporeal remnants of the past.

The artist will be in conversation with Stefanie Hessler, director of Swiss Institute, New York, at the gallery on November 15, 2023, at 6:30pm. For more information, please contact programs@gagosian.com.