DISPLAY
BY Nicholas Vargelis • ON VIEW In 2020
EFA PROJECT SPACE PRESENTS
Display
An ongoing spatial intervention by Nicholas Vargelis
On view during all exhibitions in 2020—and in the interstices.
Public reception and zine release:
Wednesday, March 11, 2020 from 6:30-8:30 pm
EFA Project Space is pleased to present Nicholas Vargelis's Display (2020), a site-specific intervention in the gallery that makes use of and expands the gallery's lighting system.
An open work, Display consists in the setting of an assortment of incandescent light bulbs of various shapes, sizes, and colors in the ceiling of the gallery along with a set of guidelines—both a protocol and a mode d'emploi. The work is accompanied by a series of artist-made zines. Functioning as an addition to the gallery’s lighting system, and in dialogue with systems art, media theory, installation art, Fluxus, and institutional critique, Display poetically and literally spotlights the invisible labors inherent to the visual arts system, staging the work of a speculative exhibition lighting designer–a role in reality often played by untrained interns, gallery staff, or the artists and curators themselves–as central to the way the art on display is experienced. By subtly employing incandescent and color light bulbs, Display undermines the assumption that art spaces may only use neutral lighting to display art, a counter to the once-subversive white cube.
Vargelis's system will be utilized during all exhibitions in EFA Project Space's 2020-22 seasons, as an active accompaniment to curator-led and artist-led interventions in the space.
A series of related artist zines by Vargelis is available for purchase here.
EVENTS
A reception and zine launch for Display will be held, in the presence of the artist, on Wednesday, March 11 from 6:30-8:30 PM in Project Space. Please join us for Nicholas' guided tour of the lighting installation and a performative reading of the accompanying zine "Display no1."
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Nicholas Vargelis (b.1979) lives and works in New York and Paris. His work combines various contemporary practices including social organization, technological development, narratives, the iconography of forms (such as the history of the light bulb), with the artist as a "situation inventor" who alters contexts to provoke different orders of thought. His practice is often collaborative and linked to a social network of artists, writers, architects, and thinkers. http://vargelis.com/