I am showing what they are showing: painting, sculpture, pictures, glasses and words on painted walls furnishing the same material experience; my work is to exchange the positions of exposition and voyeurism. You are standing in your own shoes.

—     Louise Lawler, 1987

Larsen Warner is very pleased to present an exhibition by the American artist Louise Lawler (b. 1947, NY, USA) The exhibition presents a selection of Lawler’s works from the 1980’s and 1990’s and marks the 25th anniversary of the seminal exhibition of Lawler’s work at the gallery’s previous iteration Galleri Larsen in 1998.

Lawler, whose work raises questions about the production, circulation, and presentation of art, emerged in the 1970s as part of the Pictures Generation—a loosely tied group of artists named after the influential exhibition, Pictures, organized in 1977 by art historian Douglas Crimp. These artists, among them Cindy Sherman, Sherrie levine and Jack Goldstein, used photography and image appropriation to examine the functions and codes of representation in movies, television, magazines, and other forms of mass media.

Lawler’s art deals with the effect of presentation and display on the ways in which art is perceived. Her work includes photographic images, installations, objects, texts, and graphic design. Often appropriating or repositioning existing works of art, she examines the ways in which our responses may be shaped by relationships between objects and their physical, social, and economic environment. In addition to making arrangements using existing art works, Lawler photographs installations found in museums, galleries, corporations, and private collections.

Utilising conventional variables in the medium of photography— viewpoint, depth of field, film selection, focus, and cropping— to emphasize selected visual information, she highlights aspects of the work of art as it may be seen to operate in the given physical and cultural environment, particularly in terms of the activities of collecting and display.

Lawler’s continued re-engagement with her images challenges the assumed meanings we attribute to art, status and culture. This is a rare and special opportunity to view the work of this iconic visual artist in Stockholm.

Lawler lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She was the subject of a one-person exhibition, WHY PICTURES NOW, at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 2017. Additional one-person exhibitions include Adjusted, Museum Ludwig, Cologne (2013); Twice Untitled and Other Pictures (Looking Back), Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio (2006); Louise Lawler and Andy Warhol: In and Out of Place, Dia Beacon, New York (2005); and Louise Lawler and Others, Museum for Gegenwartskunst, Basel (2004). She has been included in numerous group exhibitions, including at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; MoMA PS1, New York; MUMOK, Vienna; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; and the Whitney Museum, New York, which has additionally featured the artist in its 1991, 2000, and 2008 biennials.

Installation of Enough. Projects: Louise Lawler, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, September 19–November 10, 1987. Featuring Untitled, 1950-51. 1987. Three silver dye bleach prints and transfer type on painted wall.

Installation images of the original exhibition Louise Lawler, Galleri Larsen, 1998