Louise Bourgeois

For its second season, a female artist was chosen by Vestfossen for Galleri Star – a woman who was a genuine star in the art world: Louise Bourgeois.

When works by the 94-year-old Louise Bourgeois (1911–2010) were shown at Vestfossen in 2006, she was still an active artist. In fact, according to Wikipedia, she kept working until the week before she died. The reason this is mentioned here, is that the French-born New York artist was 70 years old before she made her breakthrough, with an exhibition at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 1982.

At Gallery Star one could see No Escape (1989), a big and heavy sculpture made of wood and metal, on loan from Kiasma. There is no way out. The stairs inside the solid logs and metal sheets lead nowhere. The exhibition also included drawings and collages built up of textiles. Being the great artist that she was, her brilliance is just as visible in small formats.

In a Norwegian context, Vestfossen could be said to be ‘ahead of the field’, as it would be a further five years before Bourgeois was exhibited for the first time at the Museum for Contemporary Art in Oslo.

Participating artists

• Louise Bourgeois