Louise Lawler, DISTORTED FOR THE TIMES, installation view, 2021
Louise Lawler
DISTORTED FOR THE TIMES
September 9 ⏤ October 30, 2021
Galerie Greta Meert is pleased to present two distinct exhibitions at the occasion of Louise Lawler’s fifth presentation with the gallery.
 
DISTORTED FOR THE TIMES refers to a methodology that Lawler has been applying to her own photographs over the years. Revisiting earlier works to reframe or distort them, she asserts that her pictures, not unlike the artworks she photographs, are always restaged in the present. For this exhibition, she returned to her 2004 photograph Andy in L.A, which shows a self-portrait by Andy Warhol hanging in a private collection in Los Angeles. She then created four variations of this image by applying digital distortion to it, and in two cases, by stretching the ratio and dimensions of the image in order to physically adjust it to fit the walls of the gallery’s ground floor space. Through these two procedures Louise Lawler draws attention to the provisional nature of art and the arbitrary forces that shape the life of pictures within and beyond the art world.
Andy in L.A. (adjusted to fit, distorted for the times, one)
2004/2016/2018


adhesive wall material dimensions variable to match proportions of a given wall at any scale determined by exhibitor 1/1 + 1 AP Ref. 4350
Andy in L.A. (adjusted to fit, distorted for the times, two)
2004/2016/2019


adhesive wall material dimensions variable to match proportions of a given wall at any scale determined by exhibitor 1/1 + 1 AP Ref. 4353
Louise Lawler, DISTORTED FOR THE TIMES, installation view, 2021
Louise Lawler, DISTORTED FOR THE TIMES, installation view, 2021
Andy in L.A. (distorted for the times, four)
2004/2016/2019/2020


digital Fujiflex mounted to Plexiglas on museum box 114,3 x 91,4 cm 1/5 + 1 AP Ref. 4352
Louise Lawler, DISTORTED FOR THE TIMES, installation view, 2021
Andy in L.A. (distorted for the times, Three)
2004/2016/2019/2020


digital Fujiflex mounted to plexiglas on museum box 114,3 x 91,4 cm 1/5 + 1 AP Ref. 4351
Since the 1970s, Lawler has photographed artworks in museums, galleries, art fairs, auction houses, storage, and homes, highlighting the lives of these objects and the contexts in which they are seen. 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 add
Louise Lawler, DISTORTED FOR THE TIMES, installation view, 2021