CONDO NEW YORK 2019

Summer hours: Tuesday – Friday, 11-6PM
Closed: 4 July

GALERIE GREGOR STAIGER presents:

Lucy Stein

Working between painting, performance, and film, Lucy Stein builds on an engagement with British modernist painting, feminist theory and women’s literature. She describes her painterly language as less a postmodern play with visual codes than an extrapolation of a contemporary female painter’s relationship to painterly traditions. Personal history and art history are given equal significance, and the mimetic relationship between the female artists and the landscape bind ideas together. For Condo New York 2019, Galerie Gregor Staiger presents a new series of works on paper as well as a number small ceramics from 2018.

Lucy Stein (1979, UK) lives and works in St Just, Cornwall. Stein studied painting at Glasgow School of Art and de Ateliers, Amsterdam. Later this year, Stein will have a solo exhibition at Spike Island, Bristol, and the gallery will feature her work in a solo presentation at Frieze, London. Recent exhibitions and events include ‘KNOCKERS’ at Galerie Gregor Staiger, Zurich and ‘£10.66’, Palette Terre, Paris (both 2018); ‘On Celticity’, organised with Paola Clerico, Rodeo Gallery, London (2017); ‘The Wise Wound’ at Tate St Ives/Porthmeor studios (2015); ‘On Heat’, Galerie der Stadt Schwaz, Schwaz / Tirol; ‘Big Farmer’ at Piper Keys, London; ‘Retention’ at Gimpel Fils, London (alongside Shana Moulton); and ‘Regression’ at Kingsgate workshops (all 2014).

Stein’s work has been featured in numerous group exhibitions such as ‘The World as Yet Unseen’, Falmouth Art Gallery, UK (2019); ‘Between Bodies’, cur. by Neena Percy and Ellie Pratt, Assembly House, Leeds; ‘Nightfall’, cur. by Fernanda Brenner, Erika Verzutti & Milovan Farronato, Mendes Wood DM, Brussels; ‘Frivolous Convulsions’, Turf Projects, Croydon, South London (all 2018); ‘Lexis Over Land: Towards a Feminist Geography’, Tremenheere Sculpture Garden, Penzance; ‘They Call Us The Screamers’, TULCA Festival of Visual Art, Galway (2017); ‘Opals’, curated by Vincent Honoré, Galleri Opdahl, Stavanger; ‘Uncommon Chemistry’, curated by Dan Howard–Birt, Observer Bld., Hastings (2016).

PROJECT NATIVE INFORMANT presents:

Kenneth Bergfeld
Sophia Al-Maria and Victoria Sin
Sean Steadman

For Condo New York 2019, Project Native Informant will showcase for the first time the drawings of Kenneth Bergfeld, new paintings by Sean Steadman, and the American premiere of BCE, a collaborative film between Sophia Al-Maria and Victoria Sin, recently shown at the Whitechapel Gallery, London.

Kenneth Bergfeld (b. 1990) is based in Köln. His most recent solo exhibitions include his debut at PNI in 2019 as well as institutional exhibitions at Part: One, Köln and Hospitality, Köln in 2018. PNI will present a solo presentation of Bergfeld for Art Basel Miami Beach in December 2019. Sean Steadman (b. 1989) lives and works in London. He presented his second solo exhibition with the gallery earlier this year. BCE is the first filmic collaborative project by the artists Sophia Al-Maria (b.1983) and Victoria Sin (b. 1991). Both are based in London. Al-Maria’s previous New Yorkpresentation, Black Friday, was held at the Whitney Museum of Art in 2016. Upcoming are solo exhibitions at Tate Britain, London in 2019 and the Julia Stoschek Collection, Düsseldorf in 2020. Sin’s work can currently be seen in the group exhibition Kiss My Genders at the Hayward Gallery, London.

FOXY PRODUCTION presents:

Srijon Chowdhury
Stephen Lichty

In his new series of paintings, Srijon Chowdhury uses the histories of romanticism and realism to produce a mythology for our present times. The natural world, symbolized by vines, leaves, and flowers, has a powerful presence in his paintings, becoming an inflammatory character in some and a Gothic undertone in others. Some flowers are on fire or glow so brightly they illuminate a face, while others, burnt or bathed in a moonlight, are subdued within diffused light. In these new works, Chowdhury uses color, fable, and realism to fuse the imaginary and the physical worlds into a vision that is once magical and grounded in the everyday.

With elements of Renaissance religious painting and magic realism, Srijon Chowdhury refigures the world around us into emotive tableaux. He embeds myth in domestic and floral settings, with color engulfing the viewer: “Color affects a person viscerally and quickly. I think about the chakras, which begin with crimson, that roots us to this reality and this body.”

Chowdhury is concerned with the interplay between painting and architectural space: framed by arches, flowers, and vines, his scenes capture both raw and subdued emotion. His paintings integrate the natural environment and the self in tour time of flux: “I think of my paintings in two ways: Some of them conjure a new and better world; others clarify what is.”

Srijon Chowdhury (Dhaka, Bangladesh, 1987) currently lives and works in Los Angeles, CA, and Portland, OR. He holds an MFA from the Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles, CA: and a BFA from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, Minneapolis, MN. Solo exhibitions include: Srijon Chowdhury, Foxy Production, New York, NY (upcoming 2020); Srijon Chowdhury, Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles, CA (2019); Before Dreams, Antoine Levi, Paris, France; The Coldest Night, Upfor, Portland, OR; and Endings, The Art Gym, Marylhurst, OR (all 2018). Selected group exhibitions include: Cicatrices, VO Curations, London, UK; Portraits, Foxy Production, New York, NY (both 2019); Swamp Thing vs Man Thing, Et Al, San Fransisco, CA (2018); February, Roberta Pelan, Toronto, ON; and Water & Dreams, The Green Gallery, Milwaukee, WI (both 2017).

Stephen Lichty’s new sculpture comprises a folded circle of raw steel that forms a triangle as it is positioned on the square plate from which it has been cut. The work’s configuration of primal geometric shapes highlights, for the viewer, the theatrical and poetic potential of even the most elemental compositions. Recalling the Modernist sculptures of Brancusi and early Giacometti, as well as the 19th century Zen drawings of Sengai Gibon, the work holds a similar allusive potential. Its play with minimalist forms, negative and positive space, and 2 and 3D opens the viewer to a range of possible viewpoints, interactions, figures, and narratives.

Stephen Lichty works in both sculpture and performance. His expanded sculptures and assemblages often recall the work of 20th century Minimalists, sharing with them a respect for materials, an eye for detail, and an acute awareness of placement. His vital interest is the connotations suggested by actions on materials and the configurations of objects.

Stephen Lichty (Kansas City, MO, 1983) lives and works in San Francisco, CA. He holds a BSc. from the Department of Culture and Communications at New York University. Selected exhibitions include: Condo New York, Foxy Production, New York, NY (2019); Be kind to the night, The Garage, San Francisco, CA (2018); Intuition, Palazzo Fortuny, Venice, Italy (2017); Stephen Lichty, Foxy Production, New York, NY (solo); A Momentary Lapse of Reason, Public Access, Chicago, IL; I am sitting in a room, Jack Chiles, New York, NY (all 2016); Stephen Lichty, CAPITAL, San Francisco, CA (solo); and Museum of Stones, The Noguchi Museum, Queens, NY (both 2015).

Please contact the respective galleries for information on the exhibiting artists:

galerie.gregorstaiger.com
projectnativeinformant.com

For more information on CONDO NEW YORK:

condocomplex.org

CREDITS
Photography: Charles Benton.