Exhibition: Hideout in the Corner of Level 6

Wojciech Bąkowski Hideout in the Corner of Level 6 May 15 - June 19 2016

Still image from an animated film by Wojciech Bakowski, showing a simplified image of a house with a gabled roof against an amber field of color. Inside the house there is a shelf with books on it.

Bureau is pleased to announce the solo exhibition of Polish artist Wojciech Bąkowski, his first with the gallery. Bąkowski works in diverse media unleashing his idiosyncratic and poetic voice through drawing, sculpture, audio and animated video. Layers of atmospheric noise and music mingle with barren representations of urban space. The artist’s synesthetic vistas are built from a gorgeous chaos of sound and color blurring sense data in a pulsing infusion of aural and visual stimuli.

Opening the exhibition is the eponymous audio piece, Hideout in the Corner of Level 6. The looping and sparsely layered sound conjures unseen action unfolding as it were from the artist’s hiding place inside a synthetic world. Within this confined enclosure, amidst the sounds of toads, ticking clocks and crackling fire, the artist projects his dramatic vision. Through sound, the mental image of this unfolding drama is transmitted into our minds. The artist’s own conflation of the senses is contagious. Passing into the main gallery, his floor sculpture, Money, Keys, Housing and Abstractions presents itself as a twittering machine of a darkened city: a machinist apparition buzzing with memory and loss.

The centerpiece of the exhibition is Bakowski’s new animated film, Analysis of Emotions and Vexations (II). In it, Bąkowski’s imagistic poetry describes the arcane mechanisms of the mind through pulsating drawings and haunting sound. The landscape of thought that unfolds defies strict delineations between inside and outside. Memories turn inside the head like projections from the exterior world, while the movement of watery vistas or passing car lights on city streets appear to be provoked by the power of reverie. There is a churning energy to Bakowski’s work, beating in the kinetic elements of his sculpture, in the distant chimes and bluster of his sound, and the weak flickers of lights that blink and extinguish, leaving darkness and the isolation of thought. The poetry driving all of these works is propelled by the echoing of Bakowski’s distinctive, stoic voice which speaks with emotion and vehemence.

Image above: Analysis of Emotions and Vexations 2, 2016, HD animated film (still) Wojciech Bąkowski (b. 1979 Poznan, PL, lives and works in Warsaw, PL) studied at the Academy of Fine Arts, Poznan. Recent solo exhibitions include: Main Issues, Vosberg, Cologne, DE, Weak Moods’ Control; Galeria Stereo, Warsaw; There’s a Pain Somewhere In The Room, Galeria Labirynt, Lublin, PL; and Realizing, Audio Visual Arts, New York. He has been included in group exhibitions A Million Lines, Bunkier Sztuki, Krakow, PL; Prototypes, XII Baltic Triennial, Vilnius, LT; It Rained Again, Bureau, New York; Voice, CCA Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw; The Day is Not Enough, Warsaw Contemporary Museum; The Generational: Younger than Jesus, New Museum, New York. His works have been screened at numerous international film festivals and, in 2014, Sound of My Soul won the main prize at the film festival in Oberhausen. In 2009 he was awarded the Deutsche Bank Prize. His works are in the public collections of The Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw; Museum Sztuki, Lodz and CCA Ujazdowksi Castle, Warsaw.

Installation view of an exhibition by Wojciech Bakowski, there is a corner of a room with an open doorway, to the left is a tall black monolith and on the right is a caper that has varying carpeted shapes on it.
Detail image of an artwork showing a blue carpet with a gold diamond pattern and a trapezoidal shape extending from the carpet with a gold key standing upright on the shape.

Money, Keys, Housing and Abstractions, 2016, Carpet, cardboard, keys, coins, engines, 8 x 79 x 118 inches (detail)

Installation view of a projected film against a wall showing a blue field with a white orb and an interior scene of a bedroom. There are speakers hanging on the walls on either side of the projection and a projector box is on the floor.

Analysis of Emotions and Vexations 2, 2016, HD Animated film, 10:42 minutes

Installation image of a video room with two speakers to left and right and a color 6:9 image at center, at bottom a white cube seat. The video image is from a hand drawn animation. Dark grey background with grey and black sketchy marks of pencil, at center is the yellow silouhette with black eyes of a man's head in 3/4 profile. At bottom is a subtitle which reads, "OUT OF BOREDOM AND FATIGUE".

Analysis of Emotions and Vexations 2, 2016, HD Animated film, 10:42 minutes

This exhibition was supported by CULTURE.PL