Front Desk Apparatus

Acting as a fabricated situation, Front Desk Apparatus presents the re-arrangement of a particular construct. The interiority of the space is dependent upon props disrupting its linear composition. At the same time, this composition links paradoxically to the weathered exteriority of its shell. What should function as a residential dwelling does not. Rather, the primary application is that of an office; an office for work and the transmission of information and material.

The props occupying the space perform real functions associated with production, while others remain inert, lifeless objects; facsimiles of what one would find in the home, the gallery viewing room, the institutional lobby, or a furniture showroom.

All of which, we are not opposed to acting as a stand-in.

In a similar fashion to Marcel Broodthaers’ Decors (1974-76), the apparatus rejects the formalization of artistic contexts, by way of domestication – producing the evacuated air of an austerely arranged film set, created out of a pre-existing condition, a working tableau that does not use neutrality as a departure point.

Situated in the company of a work environment, the art intervention does not exist in isolation. Rather, the way it is perceived and interpreted depends upon the larger frame in which it is seen.

Ambiguity, paradox and contradiction are keywords associated with the apparatus.

We are simultaneously disinterested in conforming to conventional models, but also avoid acting in opposition to them. The intent is not to act as an “original,” but to experience an equivocal condition of the fetishized object in space. Resisting the seduction of the white cube, the counter-site supports a non-neutralized interiority, and the synthesization of simulated contexts.

The working method of the apparatus is open, flexible and respondent to the unexpected. The apparatus is in constant motion regardless of physical presence. Interventions are spontaneous, in irregular secession, and adapt to the inherently ongoing processes of space, and its negation.

New York, 2009

“on the level of the work, they contain in themselves the negation of the situation in which they find themselves.” – Marcel Broodthaers