EXPLORE APPARATUS LOS ANGELES : SCENE CHANGE 2024

APPARATUS LOS ANGELES : SCENE CHANGE 2024.
Nothing comes into being without a narrative, and APPARATUS, since its inception in 2012, has consistently served a need, both functional and emotional: to bring light to life. The way in which APPARATUS achieves this is under constant revision, reflecting the ever-changing nature of light itself. Light is in constant movement, tricking the eye, blinding, and baptizing. This ethos extends to the latest APPARATUS LOS ANGELES : SCENE CHANGE.
Each APPARATUS gallery functions as a transformative experience. Visitors pass through and exit with a new protective layer, their eyes opened to new possibilities, and perhaps inspired to view their own lives and spaces differently. The term “apparatus” refers to a framework or structure, and APPARATUS serves as a tool to help recognize and understand a wider range of possibilities.
The Los Angeles gallery, first opened in 2018 on North McCadden Place, underwent a significant renovation last year. Sunnier than its counterparts in London and New York, the Los Angeles gallery implements and manipulates light with a distinct visual language. In its second iteration, each room in the gallery is organized as a progression of materials.
Upon entering, visitors find themselves in a modernist grotto, with rock aggregate walls that are rough to the touch. Here, lights are relatively low, allowing visitors to experience the collections with slightly subterranean undertones. Each room is encased in a texture that invites touch even as it repels. The walls are not smooth, yet they beckon to be touched.
Moving to the adjoining space, the textural overtones transform from rocky to reflective. Silvered walls reflect without revealing, creating the impression of being inside a Renaissance coffer. After the grounding of the first space, this reflective space functions as a release.
Finally, visitors move from reflection to roots, symbolized by cork lining the walls at the heart of the gallery. “It’s about feeling discovery and moving through layers,” says Gabriel Hendifar, Artistic Director of APPARATUS. Eschewing simple white walls allows the interactive potential of their work to shine fully. Layers, texture, and complexity are vital ingredients in APPARATUS’s creative expression, making it impossible to design without them. The pieces complete the narrative of each space, providing the moving parts that make the machine function.
Despite the new material choices in the Los Angeles space, the structural language of APPARATUS remains the same. Like the skeleton of a Giorgio De Chirico painting, clients are escorted through layers of the subconscious via archways, avenues, and repeating forms. These quiet, repeating forms and rich material variety allow the story to unfold.
APPARATUS embraces a narrative of renewal, designing lights and furniture to last. Their pieces can be centered, put away, and rediscovered years later, still perfectly relevant. The Los Angeles gallery represents roots and returns – Los Angeles is where Hendifar grew up, and after years of laying new roots in New York, it is where he chose to expand and continue the APPARATUS story. This return to roots symbolizes how the company functions: designing for change and time, embracing both inevitable factors and working in tandem with them.
At the center of this narrative is their dream protagonist: a woman living in New York in the 1960s, embodying the tension between modernity and the arcane. She finds herself in a decade that saw the first steps on the moon and the boiling point of a centuries-long civil rights movement. What would happen if this woman moved to Los Angeles a decade later to find herself? The Los Angeles gallery is the answer.
She has taken the glamour, grit, and extremes of New York, processed them, and funneled the mix into a utopian West Coast ideal, with frenetic energy buzzing beneath the surface. The intention of APPARATUS is for visitors to step into their home in Los Angeles and find new means of expression. For those more pragmatic than poetic, function remains at the center, ensuring APPARATUS never veers off course. Visitors are invited to explore this unique space and discover the intricate layers and narratives that define APPARATUS.
Photography by Matthew Placek.