New @ Lora Reynolds Gallery

Conrad Bakker:

RELAX AND TAKE YOUR FUCKING TIME

September 16 – November 6, 2010

Opening Reception: Thursday, September 16, 2010 6 - 8pm

Artist Talk: Begins at 7pm

Lora Reynolds Gallery is pleased to announce our third solo exhibition with Illinois-based artist Conrad Bakker: RELAX AND TAKE YOUR FUCKING TIME.

The carved and painted sculptures generated for this exhibition are meditations on work and leisure-each piece engaging both real and imagined economies. A large, one to one scaled portable roadside sign, like those advertising a sale, instructs the viewer to "RELAX AND TAKE YOUR TIME," nodding to textual strategies of artists like Bruce Nauman and John Baldessari. In the gallery, Bakker juxtaposes the flat shapes of this sign with an intricately carved and painted tomato plant-demonstrating a more delicate application of his sculptural practice. These sculptures are at once contemplative objects and hand made commodities that attempt to reveal how the production of things and the spending of time can engage the critical complications of advanced capitalism.

At first glance Bakker's sculptures appear to be the mass-produced goods that they are created to replicate. Yet upon closer investigation, their surfaces reveal painterly and textural subtleties that hint at each object's origin. In the past, Bakker has played with the fact that his sculptures are easily mistaken for manufactured goods, using commercial venues such as eBay, garage sales, or classified ads to sell his work. While this exhibition uses a more traditional setting for an artist, the coy interplay of replication and commodification - the crux of Bakker's practice - is still present.

Conrad Bakker lives and works in Urbana, Illinois. His work has been shown in numerous exhibitions including the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, the Contemporary Art Museum, Houston, Fargfabriken Center for Contemporary Art and Architecture, Stockholm, and his front lawn. He will be included in the upcoming group exhibition New Image Sculpture at the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio in February 2011.