When Metro Pictures asked me to do a show in 1982, they already had an image. They represented a group of artists whose work often dealt with issues of appropriation and was often spoken of and written about together. A gallery generates meaning through the type of work they choose to show. I self-consciously made work that “looked like” Metro Pictures. The first thing you saw when you entered my show, Arrangements of Pictures, was an arrangement of works the gallery had on hand by “gallery artists” Robert Longo, Cindy Sherman, Jack Goldstein, Laurie Simmons, and James Welling. A wall label titled it “Arranged by Louise Lawler.” It was for sale as a work with a price determined by adding up the prices of the individual pieces, plus a percentage for me. I went to the collectors to whom Metro had sold work and photographed the Metro artists’ works in those contexts. I printed the resulting images a “normal” picture size and titled them “arrangements,” too—for example, “Arranged by Barbara and Eugene Schwartz, New York City.” The Metro situation at that time formed that work, and it also formed a way of working for me. — Louise Lawler*
Invited to exhibit together for the first time, Louise Lawler, R. H. Quaytman, and Cameron Rowland present new work along with selected older pieces for a group show in Cologne, now in its final week.
LOUISE LAWLER, R. H. QUAYTMAN, CAMERON ROWLAND
Through October 24.
Galerie Buchholz
Neven-DuMont-Strasse 17, Cologne.
*“Prominence Given, Authority Taken: An Interview with Louise Lawler by Douglas Crimp,” in Louise Lawler: An Arrangement of Pictures (New York: Assouline, 2000).
Louise Lawler, R. H. Quaytman, Cameron Rowland, Galerie Buchholz, September 4, 2020–October 24, 2020, from top: Louise Lawler, Water to Skin (catalogue size), 2016/2017, digital Fujiflex print face mounted to Plexiglas on museum box (The Swimming Pool, 1952, Henri Matisse, gouache on paper, cut and pasted on painted paper, installed as nine panels in two parts on burlap-covered walls, photographed at the Museum of Modern Art, New York City); Louise Lawler, Water to Skin (traced), 2016/2020, vinyl adhesive wall material (the work is as a tracing by Jon Buller available as a PDF vector file for production and installation at any scale as an adhesive wall graphic); Louise Lawler, Corner (distorted for the times, perturbée), 2014/2018, digital Fujiflex print face mounted to Plexiglas on museum box (A work by Jean-Michel Basquiat photographed at Yvon Lambert’s office, 108 Rue Vieille du Temple, Paris); Cameron Rowland, Management, 2020, time horn clock; Cameron Rowland, Out of Sight, 2020, 19th-century slave iron, 19th-century slave iron with missing rattle; R.H. Quaytman, Spine, Chapter 20 [Fraser, Anastas, Lawler], 2010, oil, silkscreen ink and gesso on wood (featuring the silkscreened image of Andrea Fraser viewing Louise Lawler’s The Princess, Now the Queen—utilized in four paintings from Painters Without Paintings and Paintings Without Painters, Chapter 8, 2006—combined with a second silkscreened image of Rhea Anastas—utilized in two paintings from Ark, Chapter 10, 2008. Two black bars and the cropping orthogonal of the Andy Warhol painting in Louise Lawler’s photo delimit the silkscreened imagery along with overpainting in Marshall’s photo oils. Down the center is a line of red, green and blue. This line was placed on all paintings in Chapter 20 that reused a silkscreen for a second time.); R.H. Quaytman, + ×, Chapter 34 [V], 2018, indigo distemper and gesso on wood; Louise Lawler, Position (noun), 1982/2020, gelatin silver print, installation view. Images courtesy and © the artists and Galerie Buchholz.
