Harrison Kinnane Smith's exhibition "Tracings and Arrangements" is on view at Emmelines, a small gallery tucked inside a former newsstand in the Fifth Avenue & 53rd Street MTA station in New York, directly beneath the Museum of Modern Art and the building formerly known as 666 Fifth Avenue. The show features two works by Louise Lawler on consignment from Sprüth Magers—"Bulbs (traced), 2005/06/19" and "(Bunny) Sculpture and Painting (traced), 1999/2019"—which are black-and-white traced decals of her earlier photographs, displayed in the gritty, fluorescent-lit subway mezzanine. Kinnane Smith, at 28, frames Lawler's works as his opening gesture in a conceptually recursive chain that extends her critique of art's circulation through commerce, collecting, and institutional contexts.
The exhibition matters because it activates an unlikely, overlooked venue—a subway station newsstand—as a site for serious conceptual art, directly challenging the prestige and visibility of MoMA just steps away. By placing Lawler's works, which themselves critique the systems of art display and ownership, in a subterranean commercial strip beneath a notorious real estate deal (the Kushner-owned 666 Fifth Avenue), Kinnane Smith layers institutional critique with political and economic commentary. The show underscores how alternative spaces can reframe established artists' practices and highlights the ongoing relevance of Lawler's decades-long investigation into the art world's infrastructure.