This rare double-sided work on paper by Louise Bourgeois has an extraordinary exhibition history, including the following institutions: Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, Austria, (2005 - 2006); Tate Modern, London, England, (2007 - 2008); Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France,  (2008); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, (2008); Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA, Louise Bourgeois: Retrospective, (2008 - 2009); and the Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C. (2009).

Vorcex VI emerges from the artist's Luminous Constructs series, in which the artist began to experiment with vibrant colors and illusionistic, geometric compositions at his signature, monumental scale. This series took Held to an even larger size, increasing the architectural space of his paintings to be almost lifesize. In that context, this painting stands at a relatively intimate scale of nine feet square. Other examples from the series are in important public collections including the Yale University Art Gallery, and the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MI.

Scully’s Landline paintings resonate with the same urgency and freedom as they did in 2013 when the artist began the series. It has since been elevated to the title of his 2019 retrospective at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.. Thick horizontal bands of subtly-layered color provide his compositions with rhythmic pulse, while the interactions between striations of paint bristle with energy. While Scully’s paintings recall, on their surface, the contours of the actual landscapes that inspired them, they deepen along levels of recent personal experience and trauma—both physical and emotional.

“I think of land, sea, sky. And they always make a massive connection. I try to paint this, this sense of the elemental coming together of land and sea, sky and land…stacked in horizon lines endlessly beginning and ending…” – Sean Scully