Private View of ‘Louise Bourgeois. Once there was a mother’ and Roth Bar Cocktail Reception

‘Once there was a mother’ takes its title from Plate 9 of Bourgeois’s 1947 illustrated book ‘He Disappeared into Complete Silence,’ which pairs nine engravings with short texts she called parables. These stories and their accompanying images of isolated buildings convey a sense of loneliness, alienation and lack of communication. They also show Bourgeois’s fascination with the architecture of her adopted city, New York, where she lived and worked from 1938 until her death in 2010. In the parable which accompanies Plate 9, a son ultimately rejects his devoted mother despite her best efforts to protect him. Bourgeois wrote this in the mid-1940s, while raising three young sons.

First conceived by Dieter Roth in the early 1980s, ‘the bar’ is a dynamic and changing installation and is a continuing element in the Roths’ cross-generational practice. This exhibition activates the gallery’s ground floor space as a hub for socializing, music, readings and talks.