August 25 – September 29, 2007

Opening reception: August 25, 6–8 pm

Artist Talk: 6:30 pm

Lora Reynolds Gallery is pleased to announce our second solo exhibition with conceptual artist, painter and sculptor, Conrad Bakker, titled Untitled Project: Commodity Fetishism.

Known for his intentionally imprecise hand-painted wood replicas of mass-produced objects, Bakker will present a simulated designer showroom of new sculptures and paintings. The installation will include sculptures of design objects – modernist furniture, decorative accessories, books, and a series of paintings based on appropriated promotional images from Knoll. 

The exhibition will center around Marcel Breuer's iconic "Wassily" chair, targeting its shift from production to commodity through the construction of a life size trompe l'oeil replica of the chair posed with a figure – based on Erich Consemullers famous photograph of Ise Gropius sitting casually in the newly designed chair wearing an Oskar Schlemmer mask.

Echoing Marx's observation that a commodity is a "very strange thing," Bakker's work addresses the power and strangeness of the commodity object/image while exploring relationships of production versus consumption, the handmade versus the mass-produced and the value of utility versus the value of exchange.

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 Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, Fargfabriken Center for Contemporary Art and Architecture, Stockholm, and his front lawn. He was the recipient of a Creative Capital Foundation project grant in 2000. Upcoming group exhibitions include Transactions at the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin; The Irresistible Force at the Tate Modern, London; and On Being an Exhibition at Artists Space, New York.