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| "Cell (Glass Spheres and Hands)," 1990-93. Glass, marble, wood, metal, and fabric; 86 x 86 x 83 inches. |
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“Cell (Glass Spheres and Hands)”
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"Cell (Glass Spheres
and Hands)" is one of several freestanding sculptural installations
by Louise Bourgeois. The title "Cell" can refer to the most basic
building block of a living organism or a prison. Bourgeois' Cells
combine aspects of both definitions, pairing the organic with the
correctional. Matching used perfume bottles, vanity mirrors, model
homes, and excised limbs with steel fencing, broken furniture, a
guillotine, and a mechanical saw, each composition employs domestic
and institutional elements to tell a story. In "Cell (Glass Spheres
and Hands)," two fragmented marble
arms rest on a fabric covered table. With hands clasped in a
gesture of prayer, the isolated arms appear to be soft and vulnerable
in spite of their rock-hard substance. Encircling the table are
five glass
spheres of different sizes, each resting on its own worn chair.
Each enclosed sphere is like a bubble, self-contained but fragile
in its existence. The chairs and spheres face the table in a united
front, cornering and further isolating the hands. The work plays
with relationships such as teacher/student and parent/child. In
an arrangement that is reminiscent of a family gathering or classroom
situation, "Cell (Glass Spheres and Hands)" invests inanimate objects
with human qualities by enacting a drama in space.
Allusive and open to interpretation, Bourgeois' "Cells" are places
for uneasy contemplation. The steel and glass
walls enclosing each work protect the objects inside, but also
restrict them from ever escaping. Like a prison, the caged walls
enforce a rigid form of solitude while offering only partial views
of the outside world. In "Cell (Glass Spheres and Hands),"
glass panels obscure the objects within, forcing viewers to peer
through a grid of spaces where a window has been knocked out or
shattered. A tension is established between the desire to look into
the freestanding room and the real possibility of hurting oneself
on a glass shard while doing so. By placing one's body in danger
in order to look at the work, a visceral connection is made between
the body of the viewer and the fragile, organic quality of the objects
within. As carnal as it is symbolic, Bourgeois explains that "the
'Cells' represent different types of pain: the physical, the emotional
and the psychological, and the mental and intellectual. When does
the emotional become the physical? When does the physical become
the emotional? It's a circle going round and round. Pain can begin
at any point and turn in either direction." |
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