Step into Bonnet’s uncanny world

Published in Nuda:Saga

Swiss-born, Los Angeles based Louise Bonnet’s (b. 1970) surrealist paintings depict grotesque, contorted bodies in eerie landscapes. Although the bloated figures lack faces, they boast prominent boobs – a play with manic exaggeration and physical restraint. The bodies at times recall such disturbing concoctions as René Magritte’s The Rape (Le viol) (1934), in which a nude female torso is recast as a face, and Hans Bellmer’s controversial sculptures of pubescent female dolls. Bonnet’s uncanny, dreamlike world draws on Renaissance portraiture while collapsing the logic of perspective through absurd proportions.