The present lot documents a critical yet often disguised component in the display of artwork – the careful handling and transport of works before and after an exhibition. The extreme angle of the photograph, shot with the camera directly on the gallery floor at the same level as the mannequins and bubble wrap, provides the viewer with the artwork’s perspective. Down exists as part of a series of artworks in a state of transition by the artist Louise Lawler, who also captured white-gloved hands transporting a Gerhard Richter painting and Maurizio Cattelan’s giant Picasso head swathed in plastic. Lawler’s photographs comment upon how the life of an artwork is shaped by the criterions and mechanisms of the art world by contextualizing them in a collector’s home or leaning against the halls of an auction house. In doing so, the artist sheds light on the hierarchical structures that govern the art world and its constituents, confirming the potent reality that art does not exist within a vacuum of creative expression. As the artist stated in her 2000 conversation with Douglas Crimp, “a work of art is produced by many different things. It isn’t just the result of an unencumbered creative act. It’s always the case that what is allowed to be seen and understood is part of what produces the work. And art is always a collaboration with what came before you and what comes after you” (Lawler quoted in ‘Prominence Given, Authority Taken: An Interview with Louise Lawler by Douglas Crimp,’ in Louise Lawler: An Arrangement of Pictures, New York, 2000, n.p.).