Cheim & Read in New York currently have works in fabric by Louise Bourgeois. Dating from 2002 – 2010, Bourgeois’s fabric “drawings” – assembled from discarded clothes, sheets, towels and similar material from her personal collection – became a central focus in the last decade of her life. Significant in their own right for their formal invention and beauty, the drawings constitute a parallel body of work to that of her fabric sculptures.

Bourgeois was born in Paris in 1911 and moved to New York in 1938 and lived in the city until her death last year at age 98. Her works on fabric are emblematic of certain themes: marriage, motherhood, sexuality, femininity, domesticity. This focus on the familial results in work of intense psychological complexity, exposing relationships and hierarchies related to female identity and its opposite (male/female, mother/father, organic/geometric, rigid/pliable). (via Cheim & Read)

Thanks to Trendland for the tip, we’ll be checking the exhibit out.