Louise Lawler

LOUISE LAWLER presents an exhibition of arrangements of pictures and photographs of arrangements at Metro Pictures from November 20 to December 18. Included in the exhibition is a gallery room of art works by other Metro Pictures artists selected and hung by Lawler. In the large gallery Lawler exhibits photographs of art as it hangs in museum and private collections, and as arranged by the artist. The color and black-and-white photographs depict fragments of historical paintings and their frames in locations such as the Art Institute of Chicago and the Metropolitan Museum and contemporary works in groups hanging in collector's homes. Lawler's work, in its diverse manifestations (installations, events, publications, souvenirs...) addresses or confronts prevailing systems of establishing art, taste and style. The work draws attention to art's condition by exploring the nature of its presentation, i.e. in what place, with what other art, for what audience and to what effect.

Louise Lawler was born in New York, studied at Cornell University and lives in New York City. Lawler's work has been formally exhibited in one person and group exhibitions in New York at Artists Space, White Columns, Castelli Graphics, and Metro Pictures; in Los Angeles at Jancar-Kuhlenschmidt Gallery, California Institute of the Arts, and FAR; in Europe at Kassel, West Germany, and at the Secessionist Museum in Vienna, Austria. Lawler has regularly presented her work in non-art contexts that employ "ordinary" means of presentation, distribution and interpretation.