Events
In Conversation
Louise Bonnet
Stefanie Hessler
Wednesday, November 15, 2023, 6:30pm
Gagosian, 541 West 24th Street, New York
Join Gagosian for 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 will explore 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.
Left: Louise Bonnet. Right: Stefanie Hessler
Visit
Madison Avenue Spring Gallery Walk 2023
Saturday, May 20, 2023, 10am–6pm
New York
madisonavenuebid.org
Join Artnews and the Madison Avenue Business Improvement District on a springtime walk to visit over sixty galleries that line Madison Avenue from East 57th to East 86th Streets. The Gagosian Shop is featuring an installation dedicated to Jean Prouvé’s 1947 demountable wood chair CB 22, alongside Rachel Feinstein’s newly launched ring collection with Ippolita and the Jewish Museum, and the latest Gagosian publications, including Louise Bonnet: Recent Paintings. An exhibition by Donald Judd spanning the 980 and 976 Madison Avenue galleries is also on view.
Jean Prouvé’s 1947 demountable wood chair CB 22 in the Gagosian Shop, New York
Screening and Talk
Louise Bonnet
Naomi Fry
Saturday, May 20, 2023, 7pm
Metrograph, New York
metrograph.com
Join Louise Bonnet and cultural critic Naomi Fry for a conversation and screening 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 will discuss 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). After the talk, this psychological body horror film, in which a man tries to uncover the unconventional therapy techniques being used on his institutionalized wife amid a series of brutal murders, will be screened.
Still from The Brood (1979), directed by David Cronenberg
Screening
Louise Bonnet Selects
May 19–June 7, 2023
Metrograph, New York
metrograph.com
Louise Bonnet has curated a selection of films around the theme of “the body” as part of a series copresented by Gagosian and Metrograph. The protagonists in these movies are ruled by their outer shells—their bodies—exploring how they are betrayed by them, changed by them, and how their lives are sometimes turned upside down because of them.
Bonnet explains, “These movies have all given me something that I remember and think about since seeing them and have also made my own body react; to some of them because of sounds, joy, horror, or all of it. These films have somehow challenged the part of my brain that judges and second guesses.”
Featured films include
A.I. Artificial Intelligence
All That Jazz
Audition
The Autopsy of Jane Doe
The Brood
Le Petit Amour
Under the Skin
Still from A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), directed by Steven Spielberg
Book Signing
Louise Bonnet
Recent Paintings
Friday, May 19, 2023, 6–7pm
Gagosian Shop, New York
To celebrate the publication of her new book, Recent Paintings, Louise Bonnet will sign copies at the Gagosian Shop in New York. Made by the artist between 2019 and 2022, the nineteen figurative paintings in the book walk the line between beauty and ugliness, between absurdist, knockabout comedy and extreme psychological and physiological tension. The publication includes an essay by Nicole Rudick and a conversation between Bonnet and Dodie Bellamy. Published by Gagosian, the book will be available for purchase at the event, which is free to attend.
Louise Bonnet: Recent Paintings (New York: Gagosian, 2023)
Support
Show Me the Signs
November 10–30, 2020
Show Me the Signs is an online benefit auction hosted by Artfizz to support the families of Black women killed by the police. Over a hundred artists have created pieces in the form of protest signs for the auction, with 100 percent of the proceeds going to the African American Policy Forum’s #SayHerName Mothers Network. Work by Louise Bonnet, Piero Golia, Meleko Mokgosi, Nathaniel Mary Quinn, and Nancy Rubins is included. To register to bid, visit artfizz.com.
Nathaniel Mary Quinn, Breonna Taylor, 2020 © Nathaniel Mary Quinn
Announcements
Donation
Louise Bonnet
Planned Parenthood Los Angeles
Red Study (2022), a painting by Louise Bonnet, was sold recently to Lauren Taschen, an advocate for women’s rights, generating around $100,000 to benefit Planned Parenthood Los Angeles. The donation reflects Bonnet’s desire to spark public discussion of the discomfiting topic of abortion. “I think it’s important to make public statements . . . about basic human rights,” she says. “No one wants to have an abortion—it’s a very difficult thing to live through. Not to trust women to make that choice for themselves is oppression.”
Louise Bonnet, Red Study, 2022 © Louise Bonnet
Museum Exhibitions
On View
Effetto Notte
Nuovo Realismo Americano
Through July 14, 2024
Gallerie Nazionali di Arte Antica, Palazzo Barberini, Rome
barberinicorsini.org
This exhibition’s title was borrowed from a work by Lorna Simpson, Day for Night (2018), which translates to Effetto Notte in Italian. Curated by Massimiliano Gioni and Flaminia Gennari Santori in collaboration with the Aïshti Foundation, Beirut, the exhibition features more than 150 artworks from the collection of Tony and Elham Salamé that interrogate the meanings and functions of figuration in contemporary art and address questions around the notion of realism and the representation of truth in painting. Work by Derrick Adams, Louise Bonnet, Maurizio Cattelan, Urs Fischer, Theaster Gates, Duane Hanson, Rick Lowe, Richard Prince, Nathaniel Mary Quinn, Sterling Ruby, Anna Weyant, Stanley Whitney, and Christopher Wool is included.
Richard Prince, Untitled, 2015, Aïshti Foundation, Beirut © Richard Prince
Closed
Entanglements
Louise Bonnet and Adam Silverman at Hollyhock House
February 15–June 24, 2023
Hollyhock House, Los Angeles
hollyhockhouse.org
Entanglements is the first artist intervention at Hollyhock House, a UNESCO World Heritage site, and the first formal collaboration for the Los Angeles–based couple Louise Bonnet and Adam Silverman. In dialogue with the site, Bonnet’s paintings and drawings and Silverman’s ceramics engage the Frank Lloyd Wright–designed house’s hundred-year history as a platform for artists and experimentation.
Installation view, Entanglements: Louise Bonnet and Adam Silverman at Hollyhock House, Hollyhock House, Los Angeles, February 15–June 24, 2023. Artwork, left to right: © Louise Bonnet, © Adam Silverman. Photo: Josh White
Closed
59th Biennale di Venezia
The Milk of Dreams
April 23–November 27, 2022
Giardini and Arsenale, Venice
www.labiennale.org
The Milk of Dreams, curated by Cecilia Alemani for the 59th Biennale di Venezia, takes its title from a book by Leonora Carrington (1917–2011) in which the Surrealist artist describes a magical world where life is constantly reenvisioned through the prism of the imagination. With works by 213 artists from fifty-eight countries, the exhibition focuses on three thematic areas in particular: the representation of bodies and their metamorphoses, the relationship between individuals and technologies, and the connection between bodies and the Earth. Work by Louise Bonnet and Jadé Fadojutimi is included.
Louise Bonnet, Pisser Triptych, 2022 © Louise Bonnet. Photo: Jeff McLane
Closed
Fire Figure Fantasy
Selections from ICA Miami’s Collection
May 12–October 16, 2022
Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami
icamiami.org
Fire Figure Fantasy is the first exhibition to showcase the permanent collection of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, with a focus on recent acquisitions. The presentation revolves around important focal points of the collection: social justice, newly emerging technologies, and recent global crises that challenge and reconfigure museum institutions themselves. Work by Louise Bonnet and Ewa Juszkiewicz is included.
Ewa Juszkiewicz, Ginger Locks, 2021 © Ewa Juszkiewicz
Closed
Louise Bonnet in
Stretching the Body
November 5, 2021–February 27, 2022
Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy
fsrr.org
Stretching the Body brings together the work of thirteen women artists from different generations and geographical origins who, through painting, reflect on the genre of portraiture and the theme of the human figure. Work by Louise Bonnet is included.
Louise Bonnet, Pissing Gorgon, 2021 © Louise Bonnet