In her photographs of artworks in settings variously public and private, permanent and temporary, no artist has commented so incisively on the physical presence of art in our lives as Louise Lawler. Lawler is part of The Pictures Generation, an independent group of artists shown in the 1977 group exhibition Pictures organized by curator Douglas Crimp.
The present work is a photograph of a 1987 embroidered canvas by Italian conceptual artist Alighiero Boetti (1940-1994) entitled Non Parto Non Resto (I Won’t Leave I Won’t Stay) on view in an auction exhibition in London. Like Lawler, Boetti was interested in how context and form can transform the meaning of an artwork. Fittingly, the photograph’s title, like the artist’s use of color, emphasizes the wordplay of 'oro’ within the grid of Non Parto Non Resto, which is the Italian word for ‘gold.’