Suprainfinit gallery, Bucharest
Apparatus 22
The booth is designed as a wing of an encyclopedic reference library hosting reading/thinking resources (Apparatus 22 artworks) on several topics:
part one: Fractured identities (“M” series),
part two: The secret life of artworks in storages (“REPOSITORY & LOVE” series),
part three: Critique of privilege (“Vistas, Mist and Clarity”) and part four: Some Futures of Marseille (“?”).
Suprainfinit gallery’s proposal focuses on a selection of recent works by Apparatus 22 that unfolds the collective’s particular approach to painting coined as”SPECULATIVE STILL LIFE”. Apparatus 22 expands the definition of STILL LIFE by using language as a poetic composition imbued with contemporary symbols in subversive and speculative ways. Furthermore, they are interested to add a layer of criticality to what is known as still life.
For Art-O-Rama Apparatus 22 presents two series of three paintings each, together with a freestanding installation; as well as a new version of their performance “?” responding to the context of Marseille.
REPOSITORY & LOVE series – looks at aspects of the life of artworks in storages of institutions/ private collections that are in a coma induced of too much love. M series – look at different symbols of lifestyle in the XXth century and at the possibility of using one’s desires to emancipate and transgress social norms. VISTAS, MIST, AND CLARITY – is a large painting installation with 12 overlayered text compositions as a critique of a privileged corner of London that the collective researched during a 24-hour Observatory together with a group of students part of the Critical Writing in Art and Design MA at the Royal College of Art, London.
The painting works were presented in the solo show”The Twists and Turns of the Speculative Life: What Would Charles Sterling Say?”Apparatus 22 had recently at Suprainfinit. Invoking Charles Sterling, a curator, and scholar who wrote the most important study about still life: Still-life from antiquity until XXth century, as a symbol of the critic, is a signal of Apparatus 22’s openness for criticism in relation to their experiment that revives and deconstructs this kind of painting.
