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METRO PICTURES - Louise Lawler

2,044 views · Published 8 June 2014 · 7:23 · Indexed 27 October 2026

Channel: NYC GALLERY OPENINGS · 2014 · Entertainment

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Louise Lawler
No Drones

Metro Pictures
519 W. 24th St.
New York, NY 10011 

June 5th - July 25th, 2014
Opening:  June 5th 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

In her exhibition "No Drones" at Metro Pictures, Louise Lawler exhibits black-and-
white images that are traced from her iconic photographs, printed on vinyl and 
mounted directly on the wall. Lawler uses her photographs of artworks in 
museums, private collections, auction houses and storage to continue her complex 
and ever-evolving consideration of art and objects in their working contexts. 
Photographs such as Chandelier, a picture of an ornate chandelier at a collector's 
home overshadowing Fontana's Concetto Spaziale in the background, and Hand 
on Her Back, a plaster cast of a crouching Aphrodite photographed at the New 
York Academy of Fine Arts, are transformed into reductive outline drawings.

The "tracings" were first shown in her 2013 survey exhibition titled "Adjusted" at 
the Ludwig Museum, Cologne. Discussing Lawler's well-known work Salon Hodler 
and the picture's various re-presentations the museum's director Philipp Kaiser 
writes in the exhibition catalogue, "Salon Hodler, a color photograph taken in the 
noble home of a collector in Geneva, exists in a variety of [other] formats, as a 
black-and-white matted print, as a paperweight, a projection in public space, as 
well as a tracing. [...] Whereas the black-and-white version appears as a document 
of the original work, in the best spirit of structuralism, the traced and enlarged 
version represents the skeleton of the picture. Having mnemonically lodged in our 
mind and imagination, the picture resonates merely as its own ghost. [The 
tracings] demonstrate empirically the further steps that can still be taken to 
explore the extreme ends and corners of pictures and their contexts."

To produce the traced works Lawler worked with children's book author, illustrator 
and artist Jon Buller.

In addition to Philipp Kaiser's essay, the "Adjusted" catalogue includes texts by 
Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, Hal Foster and Sven Lütticken. It is available at the gallery.

Louise Lawler has participated in significant group exhibitions such as "The 
Pictures Generation: 1974-1984" at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Documenta 
12 and three Whitney Biennials. She has had one-person exhibitions at Museum 
Ludwig, Cologne; Albertinum, Dresden; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, 
Ohio; Dia: Beacon, New York; Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, 
Washington DC; Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basel; and Portikus, Frankfurt. Her 
work is represented in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago; Astrup 
Fearnley Museet, Oslo; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Centre Georges 
Pompidou, Paris; Fondation Cartier, Paris; Glenstone Foundation, Potomac, 
Maryland; Guggenheim Museum, New York; Jumex Collection, Mexico City; 
Kunstmuseum Basel; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Moderna Museet, 
Stockholm; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Art, 
Los Angeles; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 
New York.


Music by:
Chill Carrier - A New Day

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