Apostrophe
Brigham Baker

Created during a residency at the Cité des Arts in Paris, the works being presented take their inspiration from the last photo portraits of the architect Eileen Gray, for which she posed seated by a fireplace filled with broken furniture, a cardboard box and other objects about to be set aflame. Baker was moved by this image, which was taken shortly before Grey passed away and metaphorically evokes her coming death. During his residency at the Cité des Arts, he gathered from the streets of Paris objects similar to those depicted in this photograph (furniture, renovation debris, etc.), brought them back to his studio and transformed them into frames. He also photographed these same wooden materials as they were burning up in a fireplace. In his works, the relation that he creates between each of the frames he made with different kinds of wood, and a photograph of a fireplace which he places at the centre, generates reflection on the various transformations a material object can undergo in the course of its existence, up to and including its destruction. The exhibition also includes two photographs taken by Eugène Atget in 1905, of a fireplace blocked by a mirror, in which the shadow of the photographer is reflected.

Baker’s works awaken a collective memory around representation as a shared locus of gathering or as the vessel for our projections, whether creative or destructive. They allude to basic points of reference in the history of representation and art, such as Plato’s allegory of the cave, or the ready-made.