My show in Berlin closed this past Saturday. Here are some analog shots I took on decades-old expired film before I left.
The show included four gum bichromate prints of a lilac bush as it changed with the seasons; conduit that traced the gallery walls, with four lightbulbs that were interrupted by resistors that made each one dimmer than the last; and a glass branch installed in the window.
Thanks to everyone who saw the show, and to everyone who made it possible—especially @lucascasso , @jonatheque , @eros__theslayer , and Neal (sorry for all the mornings I hogged the bathtub making these prints).
On to another year 🌀
When I left Berlin the day after my opening, there were still leaves on the trees, but the days were already ending early. Fall was giving way to winter, the memories of summer now past.
Someone tagged me in a picture of this glass work the other day, the photographer and the now winter-bare branches caught reflected by the window pane. Winter is here, but spring lies somewhere ahead.
I tucked this piece into the window, it’s really only visible just like this, a messy overlayer of everything else happening around it.
Just another week or so, “Regrowth” @sweetwater_berlin closes Dec 20
Christopher Aque
Flow, 2025
Kiln-formed glass and aluminum
39 ½ × 10 × 5 in (100.5 × 25.5 × 13 cm)
Documentation by @joanna__wilk , me as I waited for my Uber to the airport, and @dw_1027
I’ve been taking the same photographs every time we go upstate, catching things as they change, but also conscious of all that I miss. Everything comes later than it does in the city—the winter is longer, the summer much shorter. It’s sort of like experiencing everything twice, a chance to do it over, to take things slower.
The lilacs were especially exciting to discover. Bright pops of purple appearing after a long winter, their fragrance bringing back memories of them on the street where I grew up, of my best friend Zoe’s block of Menomonee.
I am showing four images that correspond to the seasons: the lilac’s first buds in early spring, their blooms at the start of summer, the last leaves left on the bushes in the fall, and their branches weighted with snow in the winter. They weren’t exactly taken in that order—the image in the summer was the first one I took, and the image in the spring the last.
This is the first group of works I’ve ever shown that don’t feature a body. There’s nothing overtly sexy, no tension of urban space. I was thinking a lot about isolation, about pulling away, about age and decay and distance, but also how things come back around.
Plants imply so much care. Lilacs aren’t native to the US, they’ve been cultivated over centuries. The huge bushes on our property were here long before us, cared for, pruned back, regrowing year after year. They are tended to, loved.
“Regrowth” up at @sweetwater_berlin for another few weeks
The flow of electricity traces the contours of the room, offset from the walls just a bit, floating and gracefully curving around the corners. Installed on opposite sides, there are four bare lightbulbs. Each is connected to a resistor; a small interruption. The resistance increases along the circuit, so that the fourth bulb is only a quarter as bright as the first.
An electrical current is a continuous loop, but one that also uses energy as it goes. Things are not the same when the current reaches the end, fundamentally changed, used, drained. But in the process, there’s creation: light, heat, movement.
“Resistance” could be read in any number of ways—there’s that which impedes, but also that which stands up or against. The show is about the passing of time, decay, but also its implication of progress.
On a macro level, the world is in many ways worse today than it was a year ago—the decay of truth, the rise of fascism, ongoing genocide. But as a New Yorker, maybe there’s some hope, too.
On a micro—or perhaps just personal—level, progress is maybe more nuanced, more complicated. I called this show “Regrowth” since my last show at Laurel’s was called “Growth.” Growth again. Growth is, of course, about innovation, accumulation. Here I am, a few years later, still making gum bichromate prints. But they’re bigger—as big as they can possibly get while I’m still making them in a bathtub—and I’ve gotten really good at them.
All that is to say, time is a spiral. Energy dissipates, but it can take different forms. Light versus heat.
Resistance, 2025
Incandescent lamps, aluminum, resistors
Installation dimensions variable
“Regrowth” @sweetwater_berlin thru Dec 20
In tandem with my show, I made a separate series of four new prints to show @artcolognefair with @sweetwater_berlin
Each was taken at a different time of year upstate, but each also represents its own time register. I photograph the rhododendron every time we’re up there—steady, strong and evergreen—but I’m pretty sure the iris only lasted a season. This was the little cherry tree’s first blossom, while the raspberry canes stretch and grow and take over.
Someone asked me if the plants had any particular meaning. I thought about it for a moment and said no, because I don’t believe that art should be so precise. But the truth is that they all have meanings, in ways that come in and out of register.
My niece’s name is Iris; my mom loves raspberries and I remember picking the wild ones at our lake house in Michigan, though I haven’t seen them in the past few years; my uncle grew rhododendrons outside of Seattle; cherries make me think of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, of Neal working there, of the city lighting up when they first appear.
I imagine that many people have similar associations, of the lives they have cultivated, where histories merge.
Cherry (Vernal), 2025
Raspberry (Estival), 2025
Iris (Autumnal), 2025
Rhododendron (Hibernal), 2025
Regrowth @sweetwater_berlin , thru Dec 20
Images now online 🍃
To pose a question from an old standard: How do you measure a year? Two years ago, almost to the day, we bought an old, run-down house upstate. It’s three hours north—if we don’t hit traffic in the Bronx—but it’s on twenty-eight secluded acres. I have dreams to build out a studio, and Neal has space to garden. But first, there is so much to do.
The first winter we painted almost every surface we could. Spring gave us a chance to start on plantings, to see what previous caretakers left behind—we were so surprised to find huge lilac bushes, emerging from the frost into bright purple and magenta blooms. (They reminded me of the lilacs at the end of my block growing up. I’m sure that house has been demolished by now, replaced with something newer, fancier.) In the summer I bought an inflatable kiddie pool and sat and sunbathed while reading my kindle in the meadow. In the fall, I started sanding down the original pine floor boards, one plank at a time with my orbital sander. Fall gave winter, and then to another spring and summer. More sanding. The roof still needs to be replaced. The stone foundation could use some attention...
I watch time pass in fits and stops. Life gets busy and a few weeks go by between visits—the rhododendron has already bloomed; or the sugar maple, once red and vibrant, has since lost its leaves. To think of all that happens in a year, I can’t help but think of that which hasn’t happened, or has even regressed. Our parents are getting older, our friends are having kids. Life isn’t so much a circle as a spiral. I just can’t tell if things are going up or down.
❄️SNOWFLAKE SALE❄️
I’m 50 days away from the Chicago Marathon, and am rewarding donors of $50 or more to my campaign with a kiln-formed glass and aluminum wire ornament. Each is unique, and you can choose your favorite (I’ll send around a list in November, earliest donors get first pick). Domestic shipping is on me, but international friends should not be deterred, just message me and we will figure it out!
I’m raising money on behalf of the Chicago Parks Foundation. Marathon donations are funny—for those that don’t know, only certain charities are given spots for the marathon (and to be honest, it was this or Ronald McDonald House, and clowns scare me). But my work is so often about personal connections to public space—the ties the bind people together, the way life grows around our own lives—that the Parks Foundation made sense to me. After all, I grew up half a block away from Oz Park, and spent my summers at Lincoln Park Day Camp. And since it was important to me to run THIS marathon THIS year, while my parents are still living there and can cheer me on, it feels nice to be able to give back to the city that gave me everything.
Anyway, there are a few sizes, bigger donors get their pick of the larger ones. But the small ones are real cute. Hang them on your Christmas tree, or on your indoor olive tree as seen here.
Link is in my bio to donate. I’ll message you after for your address. Your donation is tax deductible of course, and if you have something as foreign to me as corporate matching, please submit it to them too!
A huge thanks to everyone who already donated—don’t worry, you will all get one ❄️❄️
Christopher Aque’s sculpture “Double Negative (Swapping Spit)” from 2021 is on view in “Play It As It Lays” at Charim Dorotheergasse, curated by Kristian Vistrup Madsen.
In his catalogue text, Madsen explains: “In the manner of a fountain, water flows between two square basins, reminiscent of the Ground Zero memorial, but named after Michael Heizer’s 1969 land art piece. Flowing through PVC tubes, the water is sanitised underway by a germicidal UV-C bulb, killing any organic matter within. Aque takes Heizer’s grand gesture and shifts the proportions, injects a measure of vulnerability. What we are witnessing is a medical situation. A quiet, simple plot, tinged with some anxiety, which begins in one basin and ends in another. Public space is full of people moved by strange, conflicted and devious motivations. Is fatalism contagious by swapping spit? Is desire as dangerous as sex? Is paranoia?”
In this exhibition, Aque’s “Double Negative (Swapping Spit)”, 2021 is juxtaposed with his 2016 film “Identity Intelligence (World Trade Center)”.
Images: Christopher Aque, “Double Negative (Swapping Spit)”, 2021, kiln-formed glass, acrylic, UV-C germicidal lights, water, pumps, and PVC tubes, each fountain 122 x 122 x 42 cm, installation dimensions variable.
Christopher Aque appears courtesy of Sweetwater, Berlin.
Photos by Flavio Palasciano.
.
@c_aque
#christopheraque
#playitasitlays
@curatedby.at
#curatedby
#kristianvistrupmadsen
@sweetwater_berlin
#sweetwaterberlin
@flavio_pesto
#flaviopalasciano
#charim #charimgalerie
#charimgallery
Last two weekends for my show @laurelgitlen . Open Saturday and Sunday this weekend, closing next Saturday, May 27. 🪻🍑
I structured the work in this show as an oscillating return, echoes going back and forth. But the exhibition itself is a return of sorts, too, and special to me in ways I can only begin to explain.
I worked for Laurel from 2010 (in a tiny closet on Broome Street) until the previous iteration of the gallery closed in 2016. I learned more about the art world than I probably ever wanted to or should have.
It was always made clear to me that artists weren’t really supposed to work at galleries, and maybe for most that should be true. The market is, more often than not, gross and deeply inequitable. But there are the rare gallerists who truly care about the work, about the artists they show, about creating something that couldn’t otherwise exist.
Thanks to Laurel for being one of those rare people, who I know said at some point over those many years “Maybe I’ll show your work one day,” which seemed like something someone just says at the time, but here we are a decade later.
This is also thanks to all the artists who I had the pleasure to work with in that capacity, most of whom I can still count among my closest friends, and all of whom taught me so much. This show feels like a homecoming, but there wouldn’t be a home without them.
My work isn’t about any of this, but of course it’s always about it, too. 🪃💫
