Hauser & Wirth: Reflections on Vulnerability

Gallery Hauser & Wirth’s exhibition Maisons Fragiles in London explores themes of fragility, vulnerability and protection through works of nine renowned artists. The works in the exhibition reflect innate sympathy towards architecture and a preoccupation with materiality. Spanning nearly a lifetime of artistic practice, Maisons Fragiles includes works by Louise Bourgeois, Alexander Calder, Isa Genzken, Robert Gober, Eva Hesse, Roni Horn, Gordon Matta-Clark, Fausto Melotti and Richard Serra.

The exhibition has borrowed its name from Louise Bourgeois’ sculpture Maisons Fragiles from 1978, which represents an exploration of the artist’s psyche. The perceived frailty of the sculpture comments on the tension between interior and exterior. Despite their fragile appearance, the structures of the sculpture are rendered in steel, and the frail appearance is only an illusion.

Roni Horn’s ‘Two Pink Tons’ from 2008 explore similar themes but through a different medium. The double sculpture made of two large pieces of solid glass plays with the disjunction between the physical properties of glass and the illusions of its presence. Robert Gober’s uncanny works question notions of ‘home’ through transforming architecture and objects, whereas Gordon Matta-Clark uses abandoned buildings as a medium and a chainsaw as an instrument in works in which he cuts the structures of the buildings and thus creates unexpected apertures and incisions.

The exhibition coincides with exhibition ‘Obscuramente – Wars of Fabio Mauri,’ which also runs at Hauser & Wirth until 6 February 2016. •

Exhibition ‘Maison Fragiles’ at Hauser & Wirth London, Great Britain, from 11 December 2015–6 February 2016.

Read also – TLmagazine 10 January 2016
Fabio Mauri: Mundanities of War and Power

Main image
Gordon Matta-Clark: Splitting (1974).
Cibachrome print. Size 101.6 x 127 cm
© 2015 Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, DACS, London
Courtesy Hauser & Wirth