Group Exhibition by Aldo Bakker and Atelier van Lieshout

Tue, Jan 3 - Mon, Feb 6  2023

Carpenters Workshop Gallery New York rings in the New Year with the group exhibition A Selection of Important Works. Among the works on view are pieces from, among others, Aldo Bakker and Atelier van Lieshout.

About Atelier van Lieshout

Sculptor Joep van Lieshout was born in 1963 in Ravenstein, The Netherlands. He is the progenitor of AVL-ville, a self-sufficient free-state in the port of Rotterdam named after the studio he founded in 1995. For three decades van Lieshout has produced work that straddles art, design, and architecture; sharing recurring themes of systems, power, life, sex, death, and the human individual amidst the greater whole.

AVL gained international recognition for sculptural installations featuring controversial or sinister nuances. Alongside playful perversion, the work conveys disdain for limitation and longing for freedom. Van Lieshout considers the body to be divine architecture with the viewer invited to interact with manufactured interior spaces resembling internal organs, acting out taboos and wish fulfillment. AVL’s projects traverse clean design and non-functional sculptures doubling as habitats, fusing luxury with anarchic independence from conventional living.

Van Lieshout’s works have been included in the Gwangju, Venice, Yokohama, Christchurch, Shanghai and São Paulo biennials. AVL is in part of the permanent collections of public and private institutions such as: FNAC, Paris; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Prada Foundation, Milan; Ludwig Forum, Aachen; Folkwang Museum, Essen; Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zürich.

Atelier van Lieshout, Sausage with Funnel Lamp, 2019. Courtesy of Carpenters Workshop Gallery

About Aldo Bakker

From early on in his career Aldo Bakker (NL, 1971) has produced works in which his exquisite use of shape, material and colour is balanced with an almost disturbing tenacity in the way these pitchers, bowls, spoons, stools and tables defy everyday perceptions about the relationship between man and object. Or more precisely: the relationship between object and man. Because despite their tranquil appearance and the modesty of their monochrome skins, Bakker’s objects are anything but submissive. They determine the rules of the interaction. Those who handle or merely observe them should come to terms with the inherent independence of these creatures. Their sensuous presence makes them highly seductive, but also hard to get. A bowl, a bench, a flask: all these ‘objects fatales’ could be (mis)taken for just being dead gorgeous and desirable, where in fact they undermine fixed notions about the object as a commodity.

Many of Aldo Bakker’s works are unique pieces. Several are produced in small editions. Next to his independent studio production Bakker has also created commissioned works for companies like Georg Jensen, Karakter, Puiforcat, Sèvres and Swarovski. His work has been acquired by museums like Boijmans Van Beuningen (Rotterdam), MoMa (NY), Cooper Hewitt (NY), mudac (Lausanne), Philadelphia Museum of Art, Centre Pompidou (Paris), Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and Victoria & Albert Museum (London).

Aldo Bakker, B Green Onyx, Courtesy of Carpenters Workshop Gallery

Aldo Bakker, Console Rest Giallo Vaticano, 2021, Courtesy of Carpenters Workshop Gallery