NEW YORK, NY.- Carpenters Workshop Gallery New York opened Slow Motion – a solo exhibition by Dutch artist Aldo Bakker. Slow Motion features 10 new works that have never been exhibited before. The pieces include stools, tables, and vessels; their materiality spanning stone, metal and Urushi – a Japanese lacquer process. Slow Motion is Bakker’s first exhibition with Carpenters Workshop Gallery since joining the gallery’s roster in 2018. Says gallery cofounder Loic Le Gaillard, “Powerful, elegant and filled with personality, Aldo’s furniture brings a new perspective, not seen before in the design space. These qualities coupled with his impact on the design world make it impossible to not want to represent him.”

Despite their singular appearance, Aldo Bakker’s works never seem to reveal themselves easily. Even the suggestion of similarity between the pieces is only the result of a superficial first glance. By slowing down the process of “seeing”, Aldo Bakker forces us to look twice, and twice again. Only then, the different creations start to speak. The pieces don’t try to reach the masses but instead address the individual. What looks like a table speaks about what a table could be, but it also reflects on the choreography of verticality vs. the horizontal. The equilibrium it creates is as captivating as a tightrope walk between two skyscrapers. A balancing act.

Slow Motion shows how Aldo Bakker materializes the eternal quest for the perfect object through objects that guise themselves as tightrope walkers, balancing between moving, standing still, and almost crashing down. By positioning his works as individual characters, Bakker forces his audience to shift its perception. We are no longer looking at an inanimate object on which we project our knowledge of style, shape or material value. Instead, these creatures invite us to engage in a conversation about their behaviour, their uncertainties, their beliefs, their native tongue. We do not approach them as buyers or even as art historians, we become their fellow travellers, questioning ourselves as much as they question us.

Featured among the selection are:

Console Table
In the creation of Console/Table it was important to examine the archetype of a table, without departing too much from the essence of the original drawing: a line. The legs are about as wide as the top and they can be placed freely to support the horizontal body of the tabletop. The curved shapes of the enclosed space gently invite the user to come close to the table and touch, or to keep a distance and enjoy the delicate architecture of the console.

Dining Table
A clear distinction marks the three constituent parts of this table. The top, the base, and the middle section each have their own expression, much like the classical column that inspired the first generation of architects who designed the archetypical skyscrapers of the early 20th century. As in these buildings Dining Table visualizes the balance between mass and force: a slim rectangular top is supported by a more substantial middle section which then rests on an even wider base.

Flat Brown
Its delicate play between substance and lightness, and especially the frontal image created by Flat Brown are allusions to the esthetics of a bat. As paper thin as it is strong, the object combines mass and shape to create a three-dimensional rendering of a line. All parts are cut into shape. The Urushi lacquer covering the entire object doesn’t stick to the contours of separate elements. This ‘flaw’ reinforces the dominance of the line.

Aldo Bakker (NL, 1971) rejected a formal arts training. As an autodidact he carefully studied the oeuvres of some of the most idiosyncratic artists of the modern age, ranging from composer Luigi Nono and painter Giorgio Morandi to writer J.M. Coetzee and architect Carlo Scarpa. With these masters, Bakker shares a fundamental interest for the language of their favoured medium. In fact, the introverted nature of his works, their elegant curves and facets, the depth of their surfaces and their flawless execution all contribute to the sensation that these artefacts tell their own stories in their own language. When they leave the studio – often after years of careful deliberation – the objects no longer bear witness to their maker, but exclusively to their own existence. To the questions they raise about the integrity of their being.

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). In 2016 and 2017 a major overview of his work was presented in the exhibition Pause (CID Grand Hornu, mudac Lausanne).