Conrad Bakker ’s Untitled Project consistently seeks to investigate the production of space and capital while exposing economic patterns. For Untitled Project: Dumpster, a handmade dumpster, carved out of wood and painted orange, is installed on Gallery 400 ’s plaza. The function of Untitled Project: Dumpster is to generate both an architectural marker as well as a hypothetical container for local debris, revealing to passersby the relationship that exists between the building at which the dumpster is sited and the people that use the building on a daily basis. The temporary status of Gallery 400 ’s location, as well as the ongoing construction and renovation that occurs on the UIC campus, contributes to the contextual interpretations of this object.

Conrad Bakker lives and works in Urbana and Chicago, teaching at the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has produced Untitled Projects for exhibitions in such venues as the Renaissance Society, Chicago (2002); Suitable, Chicago (2004); Fargfabriken Center for Contemporary Art and Architecture, Stockholm (2003); Southern Exposure, San Francisco (2005); Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams, MA (2005); and the New Museum for Contemporary Art, New York, (2004). Bakker produced a solo project for the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art in 2006, and recently received a Visual Arts Fellowship Grant from the Illinois Arts Council. The complete Untitled Projects catalogue can be viewed online at www.untitledprojects.com.

Untitled Project: Dumpster was commissioned as one of the projects in the 2005 At the Edge: Innovative Art in Chicago

series.

Related:

• Conrad Bakker website

Untitled Project: Dumpster is supported by the College of Architecture and the Arts, University of Illinois at Chicago, and a grant from the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency.

Special thanks to the jury that selected the 2005 At the Edge
projects: Tricia Van Eck (Associate Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago), Marc Fischer (artist), Julia Fish (artist and University of Illinois at Chicago faculty member), and Lorelei Stewart (Director, Gallery 400), and Barb Wiesen (Director, Gahlberg Gallery at College of DuPage).