Condo London 2024: Sweetwater at Maureen Paley
Christopher Aque, Alexandre Khondji
January 20, 2024 to February 18, 2024
Maureen Paley: Studio M, London, United Kingdom
Exhibition Text
Sweetwater is pleased to present a two-person exhibition featuring Christopher Aque and Alexandre Khondji at Maureen Paley: Studio M on the occasion of Condo London 2024.
Christopher Aque’s diptychs Ebb and Flow pair photographs of water as it meets the shoreline with male bodies in urban contexts – scenes intimate, fragile, and anonymous. The ebbing and flowing waves act both as boundary and invitation; the brief encounters captured in New York’s summer heat are at once voyeuristic and tender. Each image is a gum-bichromate print, the result of a labor-intensive process in which each color is printed separately, creating a watercolor-like effect. Aque (*1987, Chicago, USA) received a BA from the University of Chicago, Chicago, USA and an MFA from Hunter College, New York, USA. He lives and works in New York. Prior solo exhibitions include Growth, Laurel Gitlen, New York, USA (2023); Civic, Regards, Chicago, USA (2022); A void, Sweetwater, Berlin, Germany (2021); Red-blooded, White-skinned, and the Blues, Sweetwater, Berlin, Germany (2018); Idling, Regards, Chicago, USA (2018); I am, etc., Regards, Chicago, USA (2015).
Alexandre Khondji’s Dams is a modular, site-specific series which uses readymade aluminum flood barriers to divide areas within a given space. The panels and stands of the flood barriers are fabricated and arranged such that entire portions of usually-accessible space are cordoned off, limiting circulation and conspicuously altering the dynamics of pre-existing architecture. As installed at Studio M, Dams slices the rectangular room in two on a diagonal, without obstructing or obscuring the schoolhouse’s original architecture. Khondji (*1993, Paris) received a BA from Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, USA, and an MFA from the Royal College of Art, London, UK. He lives and works in Paris, France. Solo exhibitions of his include Dam Dam Damns, curated by Julie Boukobza, LUMA Arles, France (2021) and an upcoming exhibition curated by Myriam Ben Salah and Shahryar Nashat, Paris, France (2024); he will also be included in the group exhibition Air de Repos/Breathworks, curated by Cédric Fauq, CAPC, Bordeaux, France (2024).
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Artist Biographies
Christopher Aque's practice connects longing and desire to spaces both public and private. Working between sculpture, photography, and video, Aque often combines images or traces of individuals with those of urban sites, subtly making evident the inherent vulnerability of private desires set within the latent economic, social, and political dynamics of public space. Deliberate choices in process and material further the dichotomy between an underlying tenderness and unyielding surroundings – soft gum bichromate prints and cyanotypes are made by germicidal UV-C lights, delicate glass elements are situated amongst plexiglass and metal components of sculptures.
Aque (*1987, United States) lives and works in New York. His third solo exhibition at the gallery will take place in October 2025. Other recent solo exhibitions have taken place at Laurel Gitlen, New York, and Regards, Chicago. His work has been included in group shows at Charim Galerie, Herald St., Abrons Arts Center, and SculptureCenter. Aque received an MFA from Hunter College in 2016.