Exhibition: It Rained Again

It Rained Again David Adamo, Farah Atassi, Wojciech Bąkowski, Lionel Maunz, Christine Rebet January 11 - February 15 2015

Video still by Wojciech Bakowski of a counting down digital clock - white letters on black background, subtitle at the bottom reads "THIS IS A DEGENERATION OF SECONDS"

It rained again. Past tense, repeat. Of precipitation, of movement, of falling from the sky. Again, but before. The exhibition is a stage for the past tense to repeat. The frozen flow of a pewter river, the disintegrated perspective of an exploded interior, the silent chisel, the halted brush. The exhibition on view is implicitly frozen, finished, passed.

Bąkowski opens the exhibition with repetition. Counting footsteps with deliberate rhythm and sustained minor chords. A faint view into a banal grey world slowly turning and progressively vanishing.

"This is a degeneration of seconds. With afterglows and echoes of preceding seconds."

The main room is a boneyard. movement is implied but halted in statuary forms and still images plied from animation. The body of the viewer moves, counting steps as through Bąkowski's obscured landscapes. The Lost Lady Found is conjured by the reflections of Rebet's inky brush. Through the looking glass of the magician's screen of deception, the disappeared are re-imagined. Atop the central tomb, the rider of Maunz's cast-iron saddle is equally vanished, envisioned through the reflection in a subterranean mineral torrent. Adamo's carved, twisted figure looms over the room as a wicker man stretching skyward. Atassi's painting depicts the setting itself: the disintegrated space of an exhibition. The layers of patterns and complex renderings in perspectival space suggest the tenuous constructs and fictions inherent to the staging of an exhibition. Here the histories of production, of labor, of imagination and turmoil are only echoed. The vestiges of the past are made manifest for you the viewer, wet from the rain, again. image: Wojciech Bąkowski, Worsening of Eyesight, HD video, sound, 2013

Farah Atasi, (b. 1981, Brussels Belgium) lives and works in Paris. She is represented by Galerie Xippas, Paris and Geneva; and Michel Rein, Brussels. She has been the subject of two recent institutional exhibitions in France this winter: at Contemporary Arts Center Le Portique in Le Havre and at Le Grand Café in Saint- Nazaire.

David Adamo, (b. 1979, Rochester NY) lives and works in Berlin. He will open a one-person show at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo this January, and an exhibition at Ibid, Los Angeles this spring.

Wojciech Bąkowski, (b. 1979, Poznan Poland) lives and works in Warsaw. He is represented by Galeria Stereo, Warsaw and has a solo exhibition currently on view in New York at Audio Visual Arts (AVA).

Lionel Maunz, (b. 1976, Washington DC) lives and works in Brooklyn. He has had three one-person shows with Bureau, and will be featured concurrently in a group show this January at On Stellar Rays.

Christine Rebet, (b. 1971, Lyon France) lives and works in Paris and New York. Her work is currently on view in Zurich at Grieder Contemporary with artist Melli Ink. She will be included in a survey of 100 years of animation at Kunsthal KAdE, Amersfoort, Netherlands. Rebet will have her first solo show at Bureau in May of 2015.

Installation view of a tv monitor with 2 black speakers on either side, on a white plinth - the monitor shows a blurred black and white image of a wojciech bakowski video.
Worsening of Eyesight, 2013 (Still) / HD video, sound / 8:00

Wojciech Bąkowski, Worsening of Eyesight, HD video, sound, 2013 (still)

Installatoin view of the exhibition in the main space. At left, a monitor on a plinth plays a video by Wojciech Bakowski, at center a low concrete and metal sculpture by Lionel Maunz, on the right wall a suite of colorful ink drawings by Christine Rebet and in the foreground a roughly carved tall wooden sculpture by David Adamo.
Installation view of the exhibition in the main space. At left, a yellow and brown painting by Farah Atassi, in the foreground a low concrete and metal sculpture by Lionel Maunz, and in the back right, a monitor on a plinth plays a video by Wojciech Bakowski.
Still image of an animated film with a checkered design overlaid a trapezoid and circle shape, with a white half circle to the right of the image, underneath reads a caption: "So I uninstalled and I don't give a damn."

Wojciech Bakowski, Spoken Movie 5, 2010, HD video, sound, 5:55 (Still)

Installation view of the exhibition in the main space. In the foreground, a low concrete and metal sculpture by Lionel Maunz, behind it on the white wall a suite of six colorful ink drawings by Christine Rebet.
Image of a color ink drawing by Christine Rebet of a blue and pink pom pom hanging off blue and red straws, attached to a central larger red pole; at the bottom it is handwritten: 'mercy'.

Christine Rebet, Mercy, 2013, Ink on paper

Installation view of metal and concrete sculpture, depicting metal framework atop a concrete trough, with small cast iron sculptures on top of the metal frame.

Lionel Maunz, Method, 2015, Cast iron, concrete, steel, and pewter

Detail shot of small cast iron sculptures on top of the metal frame which covers a concrete and pewter base built of blocks with a pewter river carved into it.

Lionel Maunz, Method, 2015, Cast iron, concrete, steel, and pewter (detail)

At the foreground a roughly carved tall wooden sculpture by David Adamo with a green painted object on the top, behind this are a suite of 3colorful ink drawings by Christine Rebet framed in black.
Image of a colorful ink drawings by Christine Rebet in hues of brown and yellow. A group of objects, looking like, bones, or dried flowers or chicken feet or seed pods hang from strings off a horizontal rod with spikes. At the bottom it is hand written: 'Bring it to the bay'.