Born in 1970 in Geneva, Switzerland, Louise Bonnet currently resides and creates in Los Angeles, California, USA.
Louise Bonnet’s art delves into the realm of emotional allegory, where themes of melancholy, loneliness, and nostalgia intersect with a distinctive touch of absurdity and wit. Her portraits, featuring ambiguously gendered figures, draw inspiration from diverse sources such as Old Master painting, Surrealism, cinema, and underground comics. Through Bonnet’s skillful manipulation of scale, her characters become exaggerated and burst with tension against their confining frameworks. With meticulous chiaroscuro and a keen sense of physicality, Bonnet pushes the boundaries of the human form, creating bodies with bulbous limbs that seem to swell, extend, and fold upon themselves in improbable ways.
In Bonnet’s works, these characters often inhabit domestic settings or navigate extraordinary circumstances, portraying a sense of diminished capacity juxtaposed with a monumental presence.
Louise Bonnet’s artworks have been showcased at prestigious venues including Gagosian Gallery in New York, Galerie Max Hetzler in London and Berlin, and Half Gallery in New York, among others. Her pieces have also been featured in group exhibitions at Almine Rech Gallery in New York, Anton Kern Gallery in New York, and König Galerie in Berlin. Notably, her work is held in the permanent collections of the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Bonnet’s significant presence was highlighted in the 59th Venice Biennale with her participation in the exhibition "The Milk of Dreams.