Louise Bonnet and Elizabeth King: De Anima | Observer
May 13 2025
These Are the Spring Season’s Must-See Museum Shows
Louise Bonnet and Elizabeth King’s “De Anima”
Swiss Institute
Through September 7, 2025
This month, the Swiss Institute in New York opens an intriguing intergenerational dialogue between fast-rising painter Louise Bonnet (b. 1970) and Elizabeth King (b. 1950), two artists who have long interrogated the body and its representation across history: between flesh and machine, fiction and physicality, individuality and social construct. The grotesque corporeality of Bonnet’s intricate painterly compositions finds a compelling counterpoint in King’s uncanny sculptures and animations of humanoid figures inspired by 16th-century automata, commercial mannequins and stand-ins once used in place of live models. Both artists confront the evolving definition of the human—symbolically and materially—embracing its fluidity and hybridity in response to technological, scientific and societal transformation. Debuting in the exhibition is a new series of Bonnet’s works, following her recent surge in market attention after her inclusion in the 2022 Venice Biennale and her high-profile addition to Gagosian’s roster. Here, her contorted figures toy with embodiment and disembodiment, reanimating historical gestures while subverting canonical ideals in a continuous dialogue between past, present and future.