Nowadays we are seeing museums and galleries from all over the world strengthening their online presence in order to rebuild a bridge with the audience that they can no longer physically host in their spaces or meet at fairs.
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Many institutions and galleries were completely unprepared for a situation like this, but this is certainly not the case of the Swiss gallery Hauser & Wirth which merely had to boost its already strong lead in the digital environment. After the closure of its eight spaces - seven galleries between Zurich, London, New York, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Gstaad and St. Moritz and an art center in the English countryside of Somerset - Hauser & Wirth decided to launch the new platform Dispatches which now presents its first online exhibition with 14 incredible drawings by the French-American artist Louise Bourgeois (Paris, 1911 – New York, 2010).
© The Easton FoundationVAGA at ARS, NY Courtesy The Easton Foundation and Hauser & Wirth
Drawing for Bourgeois has always been a kind of daily ritual used as a self-analysis tool. The works in this online exhibition capture her inner psyche, through wavy signs of ink, watercolor and pencil and although her drawings constitute a very separate practice from her sculptural work, they manage to maintain a similar tension, oscillating between figuration and abstraction. Young Bourgeois has always helped her parents' tapestry restoration, designing and designing patterns for fabrics that needed repair, so years later, drawing became a way to tell about her inner thoughts and anxieties. Louise Bourgeois was born on Christmas Day 1911 in Paris and named after her father, Louis, who had wanted a son. Most of the year, her family would live in the fashionable St. Germain area in an apartment above the gallery where her parents sold their tapestries. The family also had a villa and a workshop in the countryside where they would also spend their weekends restoring antique tapestries.