In his practice, Adam Shiu-Yang Shaw explores the relationship between place and mind, considering how built environments influence behaviour, perception and memory. He considers the experiences of a city, revealing or casting light on forgotten, discarded, or marginalised aspects of the urban environment; from exploring abandoned mill sites in Vancouver where he began his studies, to the canal systems that trace through Berlin where he now lives. Shaw excerpts familiar and unfamiliar forms, traces of different timelines and fading civic infrastructure, to explore what remains.

Working between objects, rooms and images, he models and collages fragments of his surroundings. Through sculpture, printing techniques and sound, his work layers aspects of past and present urban spaces in composite installations, evoking displays found in municipal museums of the past. Using commonplace materials, hobbyist techniques and salvaged consumer goods, Shaw presents assemblages of architectural constructions, re-imagined objects and documentary images. He excavates history, the pre-existing forms which he aggregates are traced, disassembled and tailored into hybrid configurations and timelines; presenting half-memories, remnants of what has gone before, what may no longer exist, and impending constellations.

The exhibition here at The Douglas Hyde brings together recent and new works that drift through southwestern Berlin, namely along central stretches of the city’s Teltow Canal. These works were developed through recurrent walks and daily observations, archiving instances of deterioration, restoration and renewal. Waterways that operate as veins, feeding into the city – transporting forms of scrap and waste, the distance spanned between bridges, stratified recordings of former and present day industry – collectively point to places where slivers of the past, present and future coalesce. Together they converse to negotiate their sense of historical and commemorative value. A central work, Hive (2022-23), layers architectural details from diverse building sections (waste containers, doorways and bridges). Hive’s overarching form stages a langstroth beehive, speckled across countless urban lots throughout Berlin, presenting a series of crafted and collected objects – displayed within an ethnographic museological vitrine. Upon these layers of diverse function, the work emits a field recording – capturing ambient sounds of air traffic, distant conversations and the passage of objects, creatures, and time.

Through this body of work Shaw reroutes attention, creates alternative meaning, and pushes at the boundaries of planned and unplanned, the individual and communal experiences of ones surroundings.

Adam Shiu-Yang Shaw (b. Edmonton, Treaty 6, Canada) works between Berlin and Edmonton. Shaw studied at The Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm, Emily Carr University in Vancouver and participated in the Berlin Program for Artists. Selected solo exhibitions include Neither Parts, nor Spares, BPA// Raum, Berlin (2022); What Time Has Left, Wschód, Warsaw (2021); Can there be Forgiveness?, Ashley, Berlin (2018); F-150, Polansky Gallery, Prague (2018); and Vinegar Stone & the Language of Flowers, Towards, Toronto (2017). Selected Group exhibitions include Set Phosphenes, Studio for Artistic Research, Düsseldorf (2022); BPA// Exhibition, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2021); Vigil, Wschód w/ Layr, Warsaw (2021); Union Pacific w/ Wschód & Et al., London (2020); But Doctor, I am Pagliacci, The Loon, Toronto (2019); and At the End of the Game You Will Be Forgotten, Alyssa Davis Gallery, New York (2018).

Image: Adam Shiu-Yang Shaw, Reinigungshalle 2 (a), 2022. Wood, MDF, enamel paint, acrylic paint, wood glue. Copyright and courtesy of the artist and BPA// Raum, Berlin 2022. Photography: Eric Bell.

This exhibition is supported by Goethe-Institut Irland and Neustart Kultur.