Sprüth Magers, Berlin 17 September – 30 October
The organising principle of Lawler’s latest body of work is deceptively simple, with characteristically disproportionate results. She gained access to ’s 2020–21 Donald Judd retrospective after hours and photographed the sculptures in sepulchral twilight. Flipping a switch, then, on Lawler’s long-running fascination with photographing artworks in exhibition contexts, in transit, etc, the new photographs are appropriately among her most minimal. Judd’s precision-tooled boxes and stacked shelves only slowly manifest in the gloaming. Their metallic surfaces catch daylight’s last ebb, or sculptures sit in the shadowy background while other geometry takes precedence: a polygon of windowlight inching across the floor, a glowing red exit sign. There’s a strange parallel to occupying physical space in navigating these photographs: amid dark adaptation, you feel your way around, get your bearings, the depicted gallery building itself before your eyes. What you initially see – not much – is not what you get.
Beyond that, though, and despite their compositional gravity, the works seem quivery with potential readings. The aforesaid exit sign, which recurs like a chorus, might feel like a key, even an overemphasis of one of the show’s implicit themes: here is sunset on high modernism, as Judd’s generation takes their leave. Part of Lawler’s achievement in these photographs lies in the fact that her act feels, in a way, generous: changing the light in which Judd’s works are seen (or barely seen) aords them a new and moody beauty, like great architecture rising out of dense fog. It allows us to see these very familiar sculptures anew, and gifted – in a way, admittedly, that Judd might not have wanted – with wintry emotional contours. These are palpable enough that one might ask where the pathos in these photographs stops: whether with Judd and his generation, or (this is ) with the so-called American century, now fading in the rearview mirror, or American imperialism, or whatever. Lawler, nevertheless, isn’t going to nail that down. Her practice, for decades, has skewed to radical openness: touching the world with virtuosic lightness, slyly showing the myriad ways an existing artwork can speak when seen in dierent contexts. To do that to Minimalism, which intended to reduce art to materialist essentials, sidestep metaphor, etc, is pretty funny. Yet all Lawler would likely admit to, in terms of intent, is that she photographed these Judds o-duty. As for what you do with how they look and feel, well, that’s entirely your business.
Martin Herbert