Site/Place Research

Artist Research – Site/Place

                In the artwork of Louis Bourgeois site and place figure largely, yet not perhaps in the typical sense. In much of her work, Bourgeois is creating places. She creates rooms unified in that they seem to be lifted out of moments in her memory – perhaps scenes observable through little peepholes into her mind. In one piece, titled Cell, Bourgeois rests a set of sculpted hands atop a table surrounded by chairs all oriented towards them, with a glass sphere sitting in each. All these are surrounded by grubby windowpanes resembling the bars of a cell. These objects all work through association to create a place that never previously existed. Through assembly, Bourgeois is able to create a place. Cell has the double-meaning of both the building block of an organism, as well as a holding space for a prisoner. This scene seems to infer both, as it threatens to resemble a classroom setting, which is a venue for nourishment, yet also one where children are forced to be in for years out of their lives. By its ability to recall these associations, the viewers of Bourgeois’ Cell are brought to a place they may have once occupied in one way or another, yet one that has been manipulated. And yet, the viewer may not enter this space, and the objects contained within it may not escape, so there remains that untouchable aspect that every memory has.

It is the concept behind the objects and their grouping that works to create a space. If the objects were arbitrarily chosen antiques, there would be far less reason to feel the personal transportation one feels with the objects Bourgeois has chosen. In the same way, simply setting up four walls doesn’t create a place either. It may cut off space and demarcate an area, but it doesn’t necessarily breathe newness and separateness into a space, making it a site.

In Red Room, Bourgeois is doing something very similar to her work in Cell, yet the elements in the scene aren’t as figurative. The piece centers a red coated bed with red pillows in a room made of doors. Atop the bed sits a briefcase, the centerpiece in of a fairly empty room. Red Room works more through implication than Cell, as a bed and a briefcase are both objects of utility, yet there is no sign of their being used. The doors that comprise the walls aren’t being opened or closed, and no one is passing through them. So many doors should suggest activity, yet there is not activity, no traffic. The lack of occupancy in this room soon becomes distinctly felt. Here again the selection of objects is key in creating a sense of place. A bed demands to have a space around it, and as soon as Bourgeois abides to that demand by putting up a wall, the space becomes privatized. It belongs to the one or two people who rest there. Is not the bedroom the most private room in a house?  Yet this room is walled with doors, which seems to say that that sanctity is in question, or has been abused or broken.

Another artist who draws attention as one dealing with site and place is Gordon Matta-Clark. With a few of his projects in New Jersey, where he cut out large sections of houses, Matta-Clark interfered with what existed in a site. This subtractive method seizes on possibilities already present in what lays before you. His cutting, as in his work Splitting, opens up the house to the outdoors in a way that windows do not and cannot. It undercuts the function of the house as a haven, in a sense crippling it. Windows are a controlled opening to the outdoor, under the sanction of the structure of the building, yet Matta-Clark’s cuts expose and destroy the structure of the house. With the single cut, it reveals the vulnerability of the house.