Although she is primarily known as a sculptor, Louis Bourgeois, the French artist who died in 2010 at the age of 98, was a splendid printmaker. In these prints one can see the conception and growth of her artistic practice. James Cohan Gallery presents 33 museum-quality prints, going so far as to contextualize them by also presenting the work of two young Chinese female artists, Lin Tianmao and Hu Xiaoyuan.

The prints on display were created during the last decade of Bourgeois’ life, a refined and elegiac period during which she contemplated her life through simple compositions. The pieces, which often seem little more than adolescent doodles, are anything but. By paring her art down to the most basic elements–namely line and shape–she reiterates the primal childhood that we all share. She uses line to trace family heritage and the fluctuations of identity. Throughout her work she repeats a simple oval, the ovarian implications of which are explicit.

It is also notable how the medium of printing itself furthers Bourgeois’ themes. When she began an intaglio print, she held the copper plate in her hands and marveled at how the light glinted off at different angles. Then, with alternating grace and canine intensity, she dug out the lines that would shape her surrealistic visions of family, sexuality and memory. Moreover, intaglio was invented in the 15th century, so it is a very basic and imperfect process. After several prints, the plate becomes deformed, rendering subsequent printings changed. That change occurred during the reproductive act is central to much of Bourgeois’ ideas of the mother and child.

We feel guilty saying that the work of the two Chinese artists also on display is more interesting than Bourgeois’ canonical prints. In a curatorial coup, Lin Tianmao’s Mother’s!!! No.1 Dog, 2008, and Hu Xiaoyuan’s Being Ignored Never Ends, Just Like the River, 2011, help to globalize Bourgeois’ legacy. The former is an uncanny silk sculpture of dogs devouring a woman. Equidistant between Surrealism and the Gothic, Mother’s!!! engages Bourgeois’ legacy while pushing into disturbing new waters. The latter work is an installation of snake skin-covered balloons, cicada exoskeletons, and bones made out of paper pulp. It’s a brilliant piece, a visually fascinating homage to things that are shed, that die in order to further life. This too is indebted to Bourgeois, an artist who will continue to grow in importance long after her death.

DETAILS

What: Louise Bourgeois

Where: James Cohan Gallery | 1/F, Bldg. 1, Lane 170 Yueyang Lu 岳阳路170弄1号楼1楼1号

When: Now through August 28

Tel: 5466-0825

Web: www.jamescohan.com