MOSCOW.- Garage Museum of Contemporary Art celebrated the opening of Louise Bourgeois. Structures of Existence: The Cells, the first comprehensive survey of Louise Bourgeois’ work in Moscow and second major exhibition since the grand re-opening in its first permanent home designed by OMA in Gorky Park. The exhibition officially opened to the public on September 25th as a Special Program of the 6th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art and will remain on view until February 7, 2016.
On Wednesday, September 23rd, a Private Preview and Press Conference for the opening exhibition were followed by an intimate dinner at Grand Café Dr. Zhivago in Moscow, hosted by Anton Belov(Garage Director) and Kate Fowle (Garage Chief Curator). Guests included Jerry Gorovoy (Easton Foundation President), Julienne Lorz (Haus der Kunst), Snejana Krasteva and Yulia Aksenova (Garage Curators), Vadim Zakharov (Artist and Curator of the inaugurate exhibition of Garage Archive), artists Tracey Emin, Koken Ergun, Taus Makhacheva, Michaelangelo Pistoletto, Kean Hughes, Michael Williams, Aidan Salakhova and Yuri Albert, as well as Howard Read, Xavier Hufkens, Joseph Backstein, Marc Payot, Tina Kim, Dayana Tamendarova, Patrick McKillen, Mikhail Kamenski and Jo Vickery, Maria Bukhtoyarova, Didier Casimiro, Richard Chang, Bart de Baere, Philip Larratt Smith, Jens Faurschou, Vika Gazinskaya, Ekaterina Golovatyuk,Tristan Hoare, James Koch, Defne Ayas, Alexander Kronik and Ruth Addison, Mauro Restiffe, Olga Sviblova and Vasiliy Tsereleti (MMOMA), among others.
On Thursday, September 24th, the Private Opening of the exhibition was preceded by Discussion: Kate Fowle and Jerry Gorovoy, a talk that was held in Garage Education Center, adjacent to Garage Museum of Contemporary Art. Garage Chief Curator Kate Fowle spoke with Jerry Gorovoy (Louise Bourgeois’ long-time assistant and President of her foundation, The Easton Foundation) about the years he spent with the artist and provided an insider’s view to the development of the Cell series. Gorovoy met Bourgeois in 1980; they work together for the next 30 years until her death in 2010 at the age of 98.
Organized in collaboration with Haus der Kunst in Munich, Structures of Existence: The Cells is the largest presentation of the iconic French-American sculptor’s Cell series to date. The exhibition focuses on the extraordinary series of sculptural environments Bourgeois created in the last two decades of her life. Also included in the exhibition are the early sculptures, paintings, and drawings that led to the development of this monumental and innovative body of work. Coinciding with the show, Garage has presented two large-scale sculptures: the monumental bronze spider Maman (1999) on the square in front of the Museum; and the international debut of Has the Day Invaded the Night or Has the Night Invaded the Day? (2007) as part of Garage's Atrium Commission series.
The Cells series began in 1991 with six works for the Carnegie International in Pittsburgh, where the challenges of participating in such a large-scale group show inspired her instinct to create sculptural enclosures that could isolate and protect the worlds she wanted to share with her audiences: “When I began building the Cells, I wanted to create my own architecture and not depend on the museum space, not have to adapt my scale to it. I wanted to constitute a real space which you could enter and walk around in.”
At Garage, Bourgeois’ enclosures appear at home and stridently free throughout the raw architecture of the Museum, which is more akin to Bourgeois’ studio rather than traditional “white cube” gallery spaces.
In relation to the exhibition, Kate Fowle announced the launch of Garage’s new Inclusion Program – the first comprehensive department in Russia focusing on people with disabilities and special needs. “I can think of no better show than this to launch the program with,” said Kate Fowle, “because so many of Bourgeois’ works suggest the use of all the senses to experience an artist’s vision of the world.”
