Louise Lawler’s mostly photographic work concentrates on the spaces in between, it collapses a variety of art-world positions, including artist, curator, photo editor, dealer, graphic designer, critic, and publisher, raising open-ended questions about the place, value, meaning, and use of art. Poignantly expanding upon the legacy of institutional critique initiated by an earlier generation of Conceptual artists, including Marcel Broodthaers, Daniel Buren, Hans Haacke, and Michael Asher, Lawler puts a frame around the contexts that define art and the audience’s relationship to it. Aiming her self-reflexive lens primarily at art’s institutions—museums, galleries, auction houses, private collections, art fairs, art storage, and other post-studio contexts—her “pictures present information about the ‘reception’ of artworks,” the artist reports matter-of-factly. But Lawler’s closely cropped photographs also frame specific ambiguities, too, including art’s relationship to the inchoate economies of desire, exchange, prestige, gender, and power. Jerry Saltz has called her the conceptual Diane Arbus, a stalker who takes advantage of situations (excerpts by Todd Alden).
Solo exhibitions include 2008, “Sucked In, Blown Out, Obviously Indebted or One Foot in Front of the Other,” Metro Pictures, New York (and 1982, 1987, 1989, 1991, 1994, 1997, 2000, 2004); “Twice Untitled and Other Pictures (looking back),” Wexner Center, Ohio (cat.); “Connections, Louise Lawler: The Enlargement of Attention, No One Between the Ages of 21 and 35 is Allowed,” Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1990, “Projects, Louise Lawler: Enough,” Museum of Modern Art, New York (brochure), 1987. Group shows include: the “Whitney Biennal 2008 and 2000” Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (cat.); “Documenta 12,” Aue-Pavillon, Kassel (cat.), 2007; “Not for Sale,” P.S.1, New York, 2007; “Louise Lawler, Cindy Sherman, Laurie Simmons,” Kunsternes Hus, Oslo; Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, Finland, 1993 (cat.).
Born in 1947 in Bronxville, NY, Lawler lives and works in New York.
