Exhibition: Condo London 2024
Condo London: Kate MacGarry hosting Bureau, New York Wojciech Bąkowski, Erica Baum, Matt Hoyt, Goshka Macuga, Ben Rivers and John Smith January 20 - February 24 2024
Bureau is delighted to participate in CONDO London 2024, hosted by Kate MacGarry at 27 Old Nichol Street, opening the weekend of January 20 and 21. Bureau will present work by three gallery artists alongside three artists represented by Kate MacGarry.
Wojciech Bąkowski works in sculpture, sound, poetry, drawing and animation. For our show, Bąkowski will present a suite of drawings using his recent technique of charcoal on sanded cardboard. The imagery in Bąkowski’s somber and haunting drawings translate the mystifying connections between time and memory. A lucid dreamer, Bąkowski relays how urban dwellers map the unconscious mind onto the streets we pace and how memories unfold along curving tram lines. The shape of dreams conform to Bąkowski’s familiar skyline of post-soviet housing estates. The walls and furnishings of a bedroom interchange with enigmatic visions projected on the walls of the mind.
Erica Baum works with printed and written language, mining myriad sources for fragments of found poetry and surprising slices of imagery. Baum will present works from three of her acclaimed photographic series. Her gelatin silver photographs of the Blackboards series capture expanses of empty blackness and lush swaths of dusty white. Chalk lines and phantasmic word fragments remain, partially wiped away in between university classes. The Dog Ear and the Naked Eye works offer unexpected views and poetic juxtapositions found hidden in the pages of books. With their diagonal slices and truncated words, the Dog Ear pieces are not mere chance compositions of bifurcated text: they can - and should - be read. The Naked Eye captures dime-store paperback books, spread open to reveal a rhythm of sliced images, fractured text and abstraction, layered in a cinematic shuffle.
Matt Hoyt will show a recent selection of small sculptures as well as two of his colorful tempera grid paintings. Hoyt’s handmade objects invite curiosity and feel utterly strange and foreign while also deeply grounded in an expression of slow, geological time. Hoyt conjures subjective and variable associations with his sculptures, morphing resemblances from vast, disparate origins, which always point back to a place of imagination. Hoyt’s paintings are grounded in geometry, color and pattern, providing a meditative order and vision in contrast to the highly unpredictable space of the sculptures. The hand painted, repeating tessellations offer an entoptic buzzing, opening a kaleidoscopic portal to reverie.
Goshka Macuga has a practice based on historical and archival research, which informs her installations, sculptures, tapestries, and collages. Hidden Until Circumstances Are Suitable (Polar Bear and Wolf) (2020) is taken from Macuga’s large scale tapestry The Fable of the Wolf, the Polar Bear, the Reindeer and the Cosmonaut (2018) a complex scene in an ancient Norwegian forest, where a group of people dressed as animals (a wolf, a reindeer and a polar bear) have gathered after participating in a political demonstration. Macuga’s collages refer to British mathematician Ada Lovelace and the history of computer programming which began with in the first half of nineteenth century. Background and foreground’s are alternated and combined like a textile grid, designed as patterns for dispersing visual information. Ben Rivers’s films are typically intimate portrayals of solitary beings or isolated communities. His practice as a filmmaker treads a line between documentary and fiction. Rivers uses these themes as a starting point to imagine alternative narratives and existences in marginal worlds. The title of Rivers’s film The House Was Quiet (2020) is taken from poem by Wallace Stevens. Made in an abandoned and derelict school house on a Scottish island, the leftovers, the light and dust, an accidental pinhole camera from a hole in the roof reveals clouds on the wall and a tea tray with a classical painting of a face. The empty house brought back to quiet life by a reading narrated by Patricia Treib, an American artist represented by Bureau, New York and Kate MacGarry, London. John Smith is inspired by conceptual art and structural film, the immersive power of narrative and the spoken word. Smith has developed an extensive body of work that subverts perceived boundaries between documentary and fiction, representation and abstraction. Often rooted in everyday life, his meticulously crafted films playfully explore and expose the language of cinema. Smith’s silent, looped film, Fan (1978) is taken from the first part of his 1978-9 16mm film Blue Bathroom. The film is a distillation of ideas between representation and materiality. It begins with an apparently straightforward representational image which is gradually revealed to be an artifice, foregrounding the filmmaking process as subject matter. By superimposing and alternating identical framings of three windows filmed by day and night the film uses their positive/negative aspect to construct and break down representational images and sounds.
Erica Baum, Arm, 2015, (Naked Eye), Archival Pigment Print, 16 × 16.4 in., Edition of 6 plus II AP
Erica Baum, Word Intention, 2014, (Dog Ear), Archival pigment print, 9 × 9 in., Edition of 6 plus II AP
Erica Baum, Steam, 2013, (Dog Ear), Archival pigment print, 9 × 9 in., Edition of 6 plus II AP
Erica Baum, Untitled (Osso), 1994, (Blackboards), Gelatin silver print, 20 × 24 in., Edition of 6 plus II AP
Matt Hoyt, Untitled, 2022, Tempera on illustration board, acrylic on wood frame, 18 ¾ × 18 ¾ × 1 ⅜ in.
Matt Hoyt, Untitled, 2011-2022, Metal, various putties, air-dry clay, water-based glue, acrylic and tempera paint, 3 ¾ × 9 × 3 ¼ in.
Matt Hoyt, Untitled, 2019-2022, Metal, plaster, shellack, water-based glue, acrylic and tempera paint, 1 ¾ × 7 × 2 in.
Matt Hoyt, Untitled, 2011-2022, Various putties, air-dry clay, styrene plastic, water-based glue, acrylic and tempera paint, 2 ¾ × 4 × 2 ½ in.
Wojciech Bakowski, Reminiscence, 2020, Charcoal on cardboard, 19 ⅝ × 23 ⅝ in.
Wojciech Bakowski, Inner Museum, 2022, Charcoal on cardboard, 10 × 20 ⅞ in.
Wojciech Bakowski (b. 1979, Poznan, Poland; lives and works in Warsaw) received an MFA and PhD from University of Fine Arts in Poznań. Solo exhibitions include A Couple of Details, Stereo, Warsaw, 2023; Route Phantom, Neuer Essener Kunstverein, Essen, 2023; The Moon, a Star, and an Overhead Light, Stereo, Warsaw, 2021; Waking Up From Abstraction, Stereo, Warsaw, 2018; Holiday Power Supply, SVIT, Prague, 2016; Hideout in the Corner of Level 6, Bureau, New York, 2016. Bakowski’s work has been included in numerous biennials and other museum exhibitions including Procedures for the head: Polish Art Today, Kunsthalle Bratislava, Bratislava, 2015; Propotypes, XII Baltic Triennial, Vilnius, 2015; As You Can See: Polish Art Today, Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, 2014; State of Life, National Art Museum of China, Beijing, 2015; The Generational Younger than Jesus, New Museum, New York, 2009. His animated films have also been included in film festivals in New York, Toronto, Vienna, Ann Arbor, Wroclaw, and have been presented at Anthology Film Archives, New York. In 2015 he was awarded the Grand Prize at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Germany. His work is held in the collections of Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw; Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź; and CCA Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw.
Erica Baum (b. 1961, New York; lives and works in New York) received her MFA from Yale University and her BA from Barnard College. Recent solo exhibitions include the bite in the ribbon, Galerie Crevecoeur, Paris, 2022; A Method of a Cloak, Square is the Chatter, Galerie Markus Lüttgen, Düsseldorf, 2020; A Method of a Cloak, Klemm’s, Berlin, 2020; A Long Dress, Bureau, New York, 2019; The Following Information, Bureau, New York, 2016. Group exhibitions include Pictures & After, MAMCO Genève, Geneva, 2023; True Pictures?, Museum für Photographie Braunschweig, Braunschweig 2021; Pictures, Revisited, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2020; Making Knowing: Craft in Art, 1950–2019, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2019; Anna Atkins Refracted: Contemporary Works, The New York Public Library, New York, 2018; The Arcades: Contemporary Art and Walter Benjamin, The Jewish Museum, New York, 2017; Photo-Poetics: An Anthology, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 2015; Reconstructions: Recent Photographs and Video from the Met Collection, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2015 and the 30th Bienal de São Paulo: The Imminence of Poetics, São Paulo, 2012. Her work is held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; MAMCO, Geneva; Albright‐Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York; CNAP, Paris; FRAC Île de France, Paris; and Yale University Art Gallery, among others. In 2024 Baum will have her sixth solo exhibition at Bureau, New York.
Matt Hoyt (b. 1975, Mount Kisco, NY; lives and works in New York) received a BFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York. Solo and two-person exhibitions include Vessels and Lights, Bureau at ECHO, Cologne, 2022; Note To You, Bureau, New York, 2021; Einig, with Tom Thayer, Stations, Berlin, 2019; Six Winds, Bureau, New York, 2019; Chrysalis, Bureau, New York, 2017; Recent Past, 2010–2016, Albright Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, 2016; One Another, Art in General, New York, 2015; It’s Always Nice to Meet You, Bureau, New York, 2014; 2006- 2011, Bureau, New York, 2012; Escalator to Common Art, with Mark Van Yetter, Dispatch, New York, 2008. Group exhibitions include Mystics of the World Unite, organized by Bob Nickas, Sevil Dolmaci, Istanbul, 2023; Looking Back: White Columns Annual, selected by Mary Manning, White Columns, New York, 2022; Objects Like Us, curated by Amy Smith-Stewart and David Adamo, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, 2018; Strange Attractors, curated by Bob Nickas, Redling Fine Art, Los Angeles, 2017; Sunlight arrives only at its proper hour, curated Mitchell Algus and Olivia Shao, 356 Mission, Los Angeles, 2017; Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2012; Greater New York, MoMA PS1, New York, 2010; Looking Back: White Columns Annual, selected by Jay Sanders, White Columns, New York, 2008. In 2013 Hoyt received the Grants to Artists Award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. His work is in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo.
Goshka Macuga’s (b. 1967, Warsaw, Poland, lives in London) recent solo exhibitions include In Flux, Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona, Spain (2022) and MUSAC, León, Spain (2021); Stairway to Nowhere, Kestnergesselchaft, Hannover, Germany (2019); What Was I?, Prada Rong Zhai, Shanghai, China (2019). Recent group exhibitions include Public Matters: Contemporary Art in the Belvedere Garden, Vienna, Austria (2023); Everybody Talks About the Weather, Fondazione Prada, Venice, Italy (2023); Hollow Earth: Art, Caves & The Subterranean Imaginary, Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham, UK (2022); Supernatural, Kunsthalle Tubingen, Germany (2020) and Like Life: Sculpture, Colour and the Body (1300-Now), The Met Breuer, New York, USA (2018). She was included in Documenta 2012 and nominated for the Turner Prize in 2008. In 2019, Macuga was commissioned to make a large-scale tapestry for the Museum of Modern Art, New York. The work re-stages a well-known photograph of Andre Malraux taken in 1954, featuring Macuga surrounded by images that are intrinsically linked to MoMA’s history and collection.
Ben Rivers’s (b. 1972, Somerset, UK, lives in London) recent solo exhibitions include It’s About Time, STUK, Leuven, Belgium (2023); After London, Jeu de Paume, Paris, France (2022); Urthworks, Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo, Norway (2021) and Hestercombe House, Somerset, UK (2020); Now, at Last!, Kate MacGarry Gallery, London, UK (2019); Urth, Renaissance Society, Chicago, USA (2016); Islands, Hamburg Kunstverein, Germany (2016). Group exhibitions include Somewhere from here to heaven, Azkuna Zentroa, Bilbao, Spain (2022); Our Silver City 2094 and Hollow Earth: Art, Caves & The Subterranean Imaginary, Nottingham Contemporary, UK (2022); Eye Art & Film Prize with Hito Steyerl and Wang Bing, Eye Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (2018) and Museum of Clouds, Tate Modern, London, UK (2018). In 2013 he was awarded the Artangel Open Commission with the resulting film, The Two Eyes Are Not Brothers, presented at the derelict BBC Television Centre in 2015 and at The Whitworth Gallery, Manchester in 2016. Rivers’ first feature-length film, Two Years at Sea, was presented in September 2011 at the 68th Venice International Film Festival and won the FIPRESCI International Critics Prize. In November 2023 Rivers held a retrospective Film Cycle at Jeu de Paume, Paris.
Since 1972 John Smith (b. 1952, London, lives in London) has made over sixty film, video and installation works that have been shown in galleries and independent cinemas around the world with major prizes at many international film festivals. Smith received a Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for Artists in 2011 and in 2013 he was the winner of Film London’s Jarman Award. His solo exhibitions include Kunstmuseum Magdeburg, Germany (2022); Cornubian Arts & Science Trust, Cornwall, UK (2020); Wolverhampton Art Gallery, UK (2016); Vita Kuben, Umea, Sweden (2015); Centre d’Art Contemporain de Noisy-le-Sec, Paris, France (2015); Museum of Contemporary Art, Leipzig, Germany (2015); Museu Nacional de Arte Contemporanea, Lisbon, Portugal (2013); Kestnergesellschaft, Hanover, Germany (2012); Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, USA (2011) and Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, UK (2006). Smith’s work is included in numerous public collections including Tate, Arts Council, MoMA New York, FRAC Île de France, Kunstmuseum Magdeburg and Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź.
Photography by Angus Mill.