Christopher Aque, Alexandre Khondji, Condo London, Studio M hosting Sweetwater, Berlin

About

Maureen Paley is pleased to participate in Condo London 2024, hosting Sweetwater, Berlin, presenting works by Christopher Aque and Alexandre Khondji at Studio M, London.

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 labour-intensive process in which each colour is printed separately, creating a watercolour-like effect.

Alexandre Khondji’s Dams is a modular, site-specific series which uses readymade aluminium 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.

Aque (b. 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).

Khondji (b. 1993, Paris, France) 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).