Apparatus 22 - To the reading room. We applied ourselves to mid-air visits, review by Angelica Ungurean, 2nd year ITA

      How do you make an artwork better? You deconstruct it.

      On Thursday, April 18th was the opening of the exhibition “To the reading room. We applied ourselves to mid-air visits” at Lateral ArtSpace, part of the Paintbrush Factory federation.

      The exhibition is made by Apparatus 22, a transdisciplinary art collective that explores the relationship between economy, politics, gender studies, social movements, religion and fashion in order to understand contemporary society.

      As you enter the exhibition, the first thing you notice is the color of the walls. It is not a white cube or black box, the type of exhibition room we are used to. Instead, it is a pale grey room, which offers a perfectly neutral, blank slate for all the artworks presented. The room is arranged in such a way that each wall has an artwork on display, with the fourth one taking up a part of the room itself. The first impression as you walk in is of organised chaos or a chaotic order.

      The way they are shown today is not the way they were made at first. The pieces were first presented in places such as Venezia, Brussels and Bucharest, while for this exhibition, only a few were selected and deconstructed.

      By reading the exhibition text, we find out about the artworks: ‘Ten in total, they are physically anchored (except one shimmering like a lone star), silent (except one sculpting sounds with air just as rumors do), arranged in four genres (one having subgenres too). Each inscribed with quintessential thoughts.’

      The exhibition is both a dedication to Ioana Nemeș, member of the Apparatus 22 group, alongside Erika Olea, Maria Farcaș and Dragon Olea, who passed away in 2011, as well as a way to connect with the society by letting others reinterpret the deconstructed artworks.

      The multitude of notes surrounding each and every art piece are proof that the processes of dissection have been performed before. While carefully arranged, they give off an air of hard work and chaos at the same time, and people who visit the exhibit are invited to contribute to the already-existent notes.

      As for the artworks themselves, they are 4 in total, the M series, Disco Punch, Above and Beyond and Sky Naive | It Begs a Question.

      The M series (Speculative Still Life) is a modern take on the traditional subject, in which the artist painted words with neon paint describing elements that would belong in a contemporary still life. The three pieces of textile printed with roses are accompanied by three neons and in perfect darkness, only the words can be read.

      DISCO PUNCH is an installation dedicated to Ioana Nemeș, and it is made of a concrete block on which the word ‘WORDS’ is printed three times, covered by a tinsel curtain and in front of whom is an oscillating standing fan. The artwork is interesting for a couple of reasons. The first is the antithesis between static and movement, between dull and fun, between solid (the concrete) and fluid (the air moving the tinsel aside).

      The second reason is the fact that, if you say the word ‘WORDS’ over and over again, you end up saying ‘SWORDS’, a modern take, in my opinion, on the old saying ‘The pen is mightier than the sword.’ It is up to the viewer whether he picks one or the other.

      Another artwork presented at the exhibition was the ABOVE AND BEYOND installation, made of three poster-sized textiles with poems written in acrylic that presented an overview of life in Iran in the ‘70s, life in Romania in the ‘80s and life in London in the ‘90s, with the specific imagery of those times. It is an overview of the peoples’ escape through clubbing.

      The last artwork one sees in the exhibition space is Sky Naive, three rain ponchos hung from the ceiling, part of a performance in the Netherlands, in which the artists gave away 100 of them to people. The ponchos were adorned with messages protesting advertising, which gave a double protection: from the rain, and from the ads that plague contemporary society.

      In my opinion, the exhibition is a very smart take on the idea of organised chaos, the way people understand contemporary art and the society in which we live, while at the same time leaving room for interpretation. Anyone who comes in can have a different take on the artworks, and chances are, they are right.