Louise Lawler ルイーズ・ローラー Misugoshi Three Flags Swiped
Louise Lawler ルイーズ・ローラー Misugosh: Three Flags (Swiped)
Louise Lawler ルイーズ・ローラー Misugoshi Three Flags Swiped detail
Louise Lawler ルイーズ・ローラー Misugoshi Three Flags Swiped
Louise Lawler ルイーズ・ローラー Misugosh: Three Flags (Swiped)
Louise Lawler ルイーズ・ローラー Misugoshi Three Flags Swiped detail

Louise Lawler

Misugoshi: Three Flags (swiped)

2022

Digital pigment print on matte paper

113.5 x 64 cm

Edition of 35 copies numbered and signed by the artist on a certificate, plus 5 artist’s proofs and 2 publisher’s proofs

Unframed

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The edition

This edition is the first presentation of a new series of photographs made by Louise Lawler. The artist took them in museums by deliberately moving her camera while the shutter was open, thus blurring the artworks’ outlines and shifting the perspectives. With its vaporous surfaces and layering effects, Misugoshi: Three Flags (swiped) acquires an almost pictorial quality. Jasper Johns’ iconic Three Flags (1958) dissolves into abstraction—an ironic reversal for a painting that had challenged the abstract dogma of its own time.

This “swipe series” is in line with Lawler’s fifty-year practice of bringing to light the conditions in which art is preserved, shown, distributed and received, and it merits a specific comparison to her recent series LIGHTS OFF, AFTER HOURS, IN THE DARK. These photographs were taken at night, during Donald Judd’s 2020 retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Using long exposures, Lawler photographed Judd’s minimalist sculptures under the dim light emanating from exit signs, alarm systems, and skylights. This ghostly esthetics aptly expresses the solitary nocturnal life of artworks, as well as the dark tonality of the pandemic times. In Misugoshi: Three Flags (swiped), the lights are finally turned on, but the shadows have given way to blurry trails. Even though museums are now open to the public, the works seem to remain unnoticed, overlooked (“misugoshi” in Japanese) or simply “swiped”­—the title hinting at the contemporary consumption of images on touchscreens.

In many ways, Misugoshi: Three Flags (swiped) constitutes a new and important chapter in Louise Lawler’s long-lasting exploration of the ways in which artworks do—and do not—appear to us.

The artist
Louise Lawler Portrait ルイーズ・ローラー

Louise Lawler, Portrait, 1982

Louise Lawler was born in 1947. She currently lives in Brooklyn.

Louise Lawler is a key figure among the artists who emerged in the seventies and eighties, and one of the foremost members of the Pictures Generation. She is mostly known for her photographs of artworks in the setting of museums, galleries, auction houses or collector’s homes, which question the rules and rituals that define the circulation and reception of art.

An essential aspect of Lawler’s reflexive practice consists of re-using her own photographs and presenting them anew though different formats and mediums, transforming them into wallpapers, tracings, or even paperweights. A good example of this contextualizing approach is the “adjusted to fit” series, in which Lawler’s images are expanded to fit the dimensions of the display. She also produced installations that reflect her feminist and anti-war engagement, such as Birdcalls (1972/1981), a six-minute sound piece in which the artist squawks and chirps the names of twenty-eight of the leading male artists of the time.

Her recent solo shows include LIGHTS OFF, AFTER HOURS, IN THE DARK, Sprüth Magers, Berlin, 2021; WHY PICTURES NOW, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2017; No Drones, Galerie Greta Meert, Brussels, 2015; Adjusted, Museum Ludwig, Cologne, 2013.

Louise Lawler is represented by Metro Pictures (New York), Sprüth Magers (Berlin, London, Los Angeles), and Galerie Greta Meert (Brussels).

The exhibition
Louise Lawler ルイーズ・ローラー
Louise Lawler ルイーズ・ローラー Misugoshi Three Flags Swiped
Louise Lawler ルイーズ・ローラー Misugoshi Three Flags Swiped
Louise Lawler ルイーズ・ローラー Misugoshi Three Flags Swiped
Louise Lawler ルイーズ・ローラー Misugoshi Three Flags Swiped
Louise Lawler ルイーズ・ローラー Misugoshi Three Flags Swiped
Louise Lawler ルイーズ・ローラー Misugoshi Three Flags Swiped
Louise Lawler ルイーズ・ローラー
Louise Lawler ルイーズ・ローラー Misugoshi Three Flags Swiped
Louise Lawler ルイーズ・ローラー Misugoshi Three Flags Swiped
Louise Lawler ルイーズ・ローラー Misugoshi Three Flags Swiped
Louise Lawler ルイーズ・ローラー Misugoshi Three Flags Swiped
Louise Lawler ルイーズ・ローラー Misugoshi Three Flags Swiped
Louise Lawler ルイーズ・ローラー Misugoshi Three Flags Swiped

Louise Lawler’s exhibition took place at Keijiban from May 15 to June 14, 2022.