>> Conrad Bakker / Untitled Projects

Untitled Projects

[conradbakker]

Untitled Project: Ice Merchandiser

>>  Untitled Project: Ice Merchandiser, Oil & acrylic paint on carved wood, 60” x 54 3/4” x 33 1/4”, 2025-2026. Included in the group exhibition: “Yes &…” at Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, curated by Tobias Fike and Donald Fodness, January 29 - May 3, 2026.  This sculpture of an ice merchandiser, complete with hand-carved and painted ice cubes/crystals functioning as free souvenirs, reveals an interest in artifice and entropy, the story of control verses the inevitability of change. This sculpture combined with a small painting based on a user-uploaded image of a hand holding an impressive hailstone (from a recent weather event in Colorado) intends to initiate a conversation connecting the political economies of climate change and capitalism (and immigration). 

[conradbakker]

Untitled Project: COPY SHOP, Oil paint on carved wood, dimensions variable, 2025. >> Untitled Project: Copy Shop takes on the subject of making copies, performing labor, and finding forms of resistance through the guise of a carved and painted copy shop. On view at The Weather Station in Lafayette, Indiana 

[conradbakker]

Untitled Project: Reddit [whatisit?], Oil paint on wood panel, 8 x 10 x 3/4 inches, 2025  >> A series of paintings based on user images posted to reddit asking for identification or explanation of something that is represented in the image.  

[conradbakker]

Untitled Project: Bulletin Board [Postcard], Oil paint on carved wood, 2024, dimensions: 24 x 18 x 1.5 inches  >>  a carved/painted personal bulletin board, with pinned postcard of Lake Louise, Alberta, Canada. 

Untitled Project: Bulletin Board, Oil paint on carved wood, 2018, 42 x 72 x 1.5 inches >>  a carved and painted institutional bulletin board, whose contents have all but been removed, leaving behind the detritus of papered announcements. 

[conradbakker]

Untitled Project: Costco [Orchid], Oil paint on carved maple, 1:1 scale, 2024  >> Upon visiting Costco for the first time and in a stupor from warehouse shopping and considering objects/products according to virtues of quantity/affordability, I came across a long shelf of beautiful orchids and quickly added one to my cart. It wasn’t until I was out of the store and in the parking lot that I realized the orchid I had purchased was in fact, a plastic plant. The decorative intention and economy of materials/labor that went into the production of this fake, plastic product was still impressive, so I decided to construct my own plant out of wood and oil paint, slowly, by hand, to better understand (or even make strange) my relationship to the original/real/fake orchid.

[conradbakker]

Untitled Project: Bouquiniste [Bookseller], Paris, Oil paint on carved wood, dimensions variable, 2024.  >> a site-specific installation featuring the presentation and selling of carved and painted sculptures of specific french used-books, inspired by the cellophane wrapped titles sold by antiquarian booksellers along the banks of the Seine river. 

[conradbakker]

Untitled Project: Still Life /Style Leaf [International Objects], Oil paint on carved wood, installed, 2024  >> an expanded iteration of Untitled Project: Still Life /Style Leaf through a series of sculptures in the exhibition “Extra Taste” at International Objects in Brooklyn, New York. These carved and painted facsimiles are repetitions first in that they are copies of the real. However, these things are connected to a second repetition once they are installed in the context of the exhibition space with a corresponding surrogate, a partnered double, whose form/gesture/subject produces an echo, a second look, a deja-vu –– a rethinking of things as a strange gathering of material, meaning, and memory.

[conradbakker]

UNTITLED PROJECT: ROBERT SMITHSON LIBRARY & BOOK CLUB, Oil paint on carved wood, dimensions variable, 2014—2019

>> Untitled Project: Robert Smithson Library & Book Club consists of carved and painted book/sculptures based on the titles from the personal library of conceptual artist and land art pioneer Robert Smithson. Smithson’s personal library is notable in that his titles reveal a wide range of subjects, providing a unique window into his research and practice—and also functioning like a time capsule featuring the culture and ideas of his time. Soon after Robert Smithson’s untimely death in 1973, all of his books were catalogued, boxed, and placed into the Archives of American Art, where they currently reside.

Untitled Project: Robert Smithson Library & Book Club exists in two forms: first as a comprehensive installation, a carved and painted sculptural rendering of every single title/edition from Robert Smithson’s library. And second, as a Book Club membership program that functions like a distributed archive—with participants from all over the world who purchase the second (and final) iteration of a carved and painted book sculpture from the available titles. In many ways, this part of the project operates like one of Smithson’s non-sites, slowly marking the time, distance and trajectories between books, ideas, persons, and spaces.

Untitled Project: Robert Smithson Library and Book Club has been exhibited at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, The Wright Museum at Beloit College, The Institute of Contemporary Art (formerly the Cress Gallery) at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, The Krannert Art Museum at the University of Illinois, and as “R. SMITHSON’S BOOKS” a faux, used bookstore in the storefront of the Famous Hardware building in Springdale, Arkansas, at Shed Projects in Cleveland, Ohio and most recently at International Objects in Brooklyn, as part of the group exhibition: Extra Taste

UNTITLED PROJECT: ROBERT SMITHSON LIBRARY & BOOK CLUB

[conradbakker]

Untitled Project: Poster [Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce 1080 Bruxelles - Un film de Chantal Akerman], Oil paint on carved wood, 48 x 34 x 1 1/2 inches, 2023

>> a hand-carved and painted wood sculpture based on the original film poster of Chantal Akerman’s “Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce 1080 Bruxelles,” one of the ‘greatest films of all time’ and an amazing cinematic meditation on time, duration, and the everyday.

This artwork, a hand-made thing, exists in relationship to time much like the film, as a durational object, but also points to the ongoing commodification of cultural artifacts like original film posters (on ebay and in auction houses) which in the case of this film and its poster, is extremely rare and valuable.

[conradbakker]

Untitled Project: Climate Economies [Souvenirs, Supplies, & Sno-Balls], Oil paint on carved wood, 2022  -- @ SHED /New Orleans    >> Untitled Project: Climate Economies [Souvenirs, Supplies, & Sno-Balls] was an examination of consumer objects and behaviors related to climate change and natural disasters in New Orleans, Louisiana. Featuring carved and painted wood sculptures of hurricane supplies and souvenirs as well as double-sided paintings of shaved ice treats (sno-balls) paired with products from hurricane kits, the work in this exhibition engaged hand labor and poetic relations to push the theatre of consumption up against the perpetual threat of extreme weather.

Archive: Untitled Project: Climate Economies [NOLA] [Sno-Balls + Supplies]

[conradbakker]

UNTITLED PROJECT: SMITHSON’S BOOKS, Oil/enamel paint on carved wood, installed, 2021  >> Untitled Project: Smithson’s Books is an iteration of Untitled Project: Robert Smithson Library & Book Club in the form of a used book store that is opening soon and/or going out of business –– installed in the storefront windows of the Famous Hardware building in Springdale, Arkansas from November 2021 thru February 2022.

[conradbakker]

UNTITLED PROJECT: LA CHOCOLATERIE [La Boutique] [L’Atelier] [Le Journal] @ Galerie Analix Forever, Geneva, Switzerland, 2021 >>  Untitled Project: La Chocolaterie is comprised of three connecting parts: La Boutique, L’Atelier, and Le Journal (The Store, The Workshop, and The Newspaper). Untitled Project: La Chocolaterie [La Boutique] is a storefront/art installation in Geneva, Switzerland, featuring hundreds of carved and painted sculptures of Swiss-branded chocolate bars, based on specific cocoa-consumables from the past and present. These carved and painted chocolate bars are available for sale at the price of 100.00CHF, an amount roughly equivalent to one months wages for the average cocoa farmer working in the Côte d'Ivoire, Africa. The storefront space (La Boutique) is directly connected to the secondary space, Untitled Project: La Chocolaterie [L’Atelier] is an installation of more than a hundred different carved and painted sculptures of objects and tools from the artist’s studio, revealing the process of production for each of the carved and painted Swiss chocolate bars and pointing (somewhat theatrically) to the connections between commodities and labor.  The last part of this project, Untitled Project: La Chocolaterie [Le Journal] is a free, full-color, printed newspaper featuring drawings based on headlines and images taken from a wide range of internet sources and news websites covering cocoa production and the (Swiss) chocolate industrial complex.

LINKS:

Project website w/ images/info: Untitled Project: La Chocolaterie

Chocolats (archive): Untitled Project: La Boutique

Le Journal website: Untitled Project: La Chocolaterie [Le Journal]

Le Journal as pdf: Untitled Project: La Chocolaterie [Le Journal]

@ Galerie Analix Forever, Genève, Switzerland

[conradbakker]

UNTITLED PROJECT: LA CHOCOLATERIE [La Boutique] >>  is a store front commercial space featuring hundreds of carved and painted, Swiss-branded chocolate bars. These chocolate bar sculptures were for sale (cash and carry) at the price of 100 CHF, an amount roughly equivalent to one months wages for the average cocoa farmer working in the Côte d'Ivoire, Africa.

The entire visual archive of carved and painted chocolate bars can be found here: https://lachocolaterielaboutique.tumblr.com

[conradbakker]

Untitled Project: La Chocolaterie [Le Journal] is a free, full-color, printed newspaper featuring digital drawings of headlines+images based on online news and economic data concerning the complex relationship between the chocolate industrial complex and cocoa production on the ground.

website

pdf

[conradbakker]

UNTITLED PROJECT: LA SOCIÉTÉ DU SPECTACLE, Oil paint on carved wood, 2021  >> a carved and painted book/sculpture of Guy Debord’s seminal text, The Society of the Spectacle, based on a highly-collectible, first-edition copy from 1967. This book/sculpture was specifically made for and given to the artist Frank Perrin after several conversations about books, capitalism, and Guy Debord. 

[conradbakker]

Untitled Project: Sign [Blockbuster] >> Oil paint on carved wood, 2.6ft x 6.2ft x 12.3ft, 2021

>> Untitled Project: Sign [Blockbuster] is a carved and painted Blockbuster Video store sign as a crashed/grounded event.  This sculptural depiction of a once popular, now defunct video rental chain is intended to function as a nostalgic platform for thinking critically about our physical relationship to both movies and corporations.

This project was paired with >> Untitled Project: Hi-Touch [VHS], Oil paint on carved wood, dimensions variable, 2021 <<  Untitled Project: Hi-Touch [VHS] was a made-to-order, digital-to-analog conversion service designed to turn one of your favorite digital videos, smartphone films, YouTube hits, animated gifs, kitten vlogs, tween Tik-Toks, vintage vines,  social media captures, or conceptual art videos, into a hand-carved, hand-painted VHS videocassette tape sculpture! 

link to project website: https://untitledprojects.com/HITOUCHVHS

[conradbakker]

UNTITLED PROJECT: BLOCKBUSTER [ THE CORPORATION ], oil paint on carved wood,  2006/2020  >> a carved and painted Blockbuster video store shopping bag holding a rental DVD of the documentary film The Corporation. This visual conflation of these entities points to the immutable relationship between the critique of corporate capitalism and its consumption.