Conrad Bakker

Untitled Project: Still Life / Style Leaf is a reflection on things and their representations, using the construction of a still life to arrange a series of repetitions. The title of this project is borrowed from Georges Perec’s brief essay Still Life / Style Leaf in which he describes the everyday objects on his writing desk and then repeats the task, literally describing his description. In a similar way, Untitled Project: Still Life / Style Leaf uses repetition and representation to connect and complicate the things themselves through their forms, their uses, and their arrangements.

Conrad Bakker makes carved and painted sculptures of everyday objects and positions them specifically to reveal their political economies and relational networks. Bakker has exhibited his work extensively, including Tate Modern (London), Musée d’art contemporain de Lyon (France), Galerie Analix Forever (Geneva), Fargfabriken Center for Contemporary Art and Architecture (Stockholm), the New Museum (New York), the Renaissance Society (Chicago), the Contemporary Art Museum Houston, The Utah Museum of Fine Arts (Salt Lake City), in Cabinet Magazine, in stranger’s mailboxes and on his own front lawn. His work has been the subject of articles and reviews in Frieze, Contemporary, Flash Art, Art Forum, Art World Magazine, ArtUS, Art Papers, Sculpture, The Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, and The New Yorker. Conrad Bakker has been awarded individual artist grants from the Creative Capital Foundation, The Illinois Arts Council, and the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant Program. He teaches in the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.
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