For Frieze London 2024, Galeria Wschód is pleased to exhibit new architectural installation by Adam Shiu-Yang Shaw (b. 1987, Edmonton, CA).

Frieze London
October 9-13, 2024
The Regent’s Park

The works of Adam Shiu-Yang Shaw reflect on the features and operations of urban areas and their hinterlands. Focusing upon jointly obvious and overlooked aspects of our built environments, and the utilitarian entities which inhabit them, Shaw crafts architecture-like models, sculptural microcosms, and precise structures; steering to create a syncretic landscape of unruly forms. Undulating between items of regional specificity and global ubiquity, Shaw’s typological studies dive into the physical remembrance of how we inhabit space. His slowly crafted objects become a compass, directing us towards distant places and times; calling into question the endless speculation of our constructed world.

[…]

These artworks rest with a more-than-human scale, reminiscent of a medieval relief tomb. Set within this riveted and punctuated space of boxcar partitions, they work together in factory-like synchronicity. Layers of industrial acrylic, in their yellows, greys, greens, blacks and beiges, detail in abundance the shadows and contours of each and every protrusion. Thermoplastic adhesives and polystyrene merge beneath PVA soaked newsprint casings. Painstakingly made; crafted, carved, routed, painted, brushed, and sanded, it is almost as if they were never fabricated at all, and were ‘simply’ always this way. This exacting procedural vocabulary becomes infused with a terminological purpose and drive; where sculptural origins bridge backwards and observe a series of minute views. When we look back, we back track, but what we see is no longer there.

– text by Simon Shim-Sutcliffe

Adam Shiu-Yang Shaw (b.1987, Edmonton, CA) lives and works in Berlin. Selected solo exhibitions: Frieze London, London (2024); Loose Leaves, Towards, Toronto (2023); The Artist’s Eye, The Douglas Hyde Gallery of Contemporary Art, Dublin (2023); Swinging Door, Mimer – Norbergfestival, Norber (2023); Neither Parts, nor Spares, BPA// Raum, Berlin (2022); What Time Has Left, Wschód, Warsaw (2021). Selected group exhibitions: Catriona Jeffries, Vancouver (2025), Schrödingers Katze, Kunstverein Gastgarten, Hamburg (2025); Set Phosphenes, Studio for Artistic Research, Düsseldorf (2022);  BPA// Exhibition, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2021); Casa Uovo, Sangt Hipolyt, Berlin (2021); Vigil, Friend of a Friend with Emanuel Layr and Wschód, Warsaw (2021).