When someone begins to talk to you about "energy" and the sort of energy we feel in the world, we probably all used to roll our eyes a little bit. I think that has changed in recent years. There is a palpable energy of chaos and uncontrol in the world today, and we all feel it in our own ways and can see it in the people we interact with. There is something both ancient and post-human about it all, clashing, angry, confusing and often just something that feel helpless. And it's global.
This came up when I started looking at Louise Bonnet's new show, Onslaught, on view at Gagosian in Hong Kong. Bodies are just not as they seem, and there is an energy that emanates from them that is part humor and part almost ugly, and yet beautiful and dark all at the same time. The body is giving off an uncontrollable urge. "There are all these rules about openings in the body, about things leaking out," Bonnet says. "That’s interesting to me—the body out of control." She is painting a sense of discomfort from a place of fascinated comfort, painting shame from a historical vantage point of not giving in to shame.
“We are much more prudish about certain things now than people were in the 1500s,” Bonnet notes, and there is something about our modern angst that has us feeling primal and yet protected. These paintings are all the wiser for letting us see ourselves in the 2000s. —Evan Pricco
