ART MEETS APOLO unites clubbing and art in different spaces of the venue
ART MEETS APOLO is a multidisciplinary exhibition project that addresses the relationship between club culture and art through the eyes of different artists from the city.
The art gallery and the club have always existed in constant opposition: while the former is associated with observation and stillness, the other tends to relate to agitation and chaos. However, both are platforms for the personal expression of both the author and the receiver, creating emotionally intense and immersive experiences.
The point of intersection between clubbing and the art world, so intimately linked, is precisely what has pushed the venue to create a project that helps to strengthen ties and experience these realities as a whole.
To this end, Apolo opens its doors to non-musical artists from different disciplines, both renowned and young emerging talents, with local and equal representation as the backbone. Over the course of 2023 has included the productions of Pedro Torres, Mónica Rikić, Jordi Gispert i Pi, Fito Conesa and Ada Morales & Carla Puig, whose works are exhibited for months, so that the public who come to the venue can enjoy them during concert and club sessions.
To develop and coordinate the project, we have aligned ourselves with the gallery LAB 36, the parallel project to Galería Senda, and the cultural agency Screen Projects (LOOP Barcelona), which has allowed us to amplify the effect and purpose of ART MEETS APOLO, bringing together two worlds and their respective artists, audiences, ways of working, knowledge and experiences with a clear benefit: local culture.
"ACCUMBENS" BY PEDRO TORRES
With the aim of experimenting with the concept of time, distance, memory and language, the visual artist, Pedro Torres (Brazil, 1982), uses the image as a mechanism, tool and concept to develop narratives. Artistic productions where science and its approaches and theories also play a relevant role to investigate in a methodological, intuitive and poetic way.
The work he is exhibiting at Apolo, "ACCUMBENS", created for the occasion this year 2023, is based on moving images and a site-responsive character which link various visual stimuli that will be processed, among others, by neurons in the nucleus accumbens, a group of neurons in the brain involved in moments such as pleasure, fear, aggression or addiction. The three channels of the installation are presented in devices based on the persistence of vision.
"PSYCHOFLAGE" BY MÓNICA RIKIĆ
Electronic artist and creative programmer, Mónica Rikić (Barcelona 1986) focuses her artistic practice on creative coding and electronics, combining them with non-digital objects to create interactive projects, robotic installations and handmade electronic devices that move away from functionality.
This is the case of "PSYCHOFLAGE", the work on display at Apolo, formed by electronic modules equipped with an AI system that influences their behavior: inflating and deflating them and changing their interior light. A playful proposal that transforms the Hall into a space of multicolored psychedelic fantasy.
"APOLO PARADÍS ARTIFICIAL" BY JORDI GISPERT PI
The multidisciplinary artist Jordi Gispert Pi (Barcelona, 1957) has focused much of his work on the search for planetary rebalancing and utopian society through works made from recycled materials or recovered from containers, paintings of landscape motifs or murals sculpted on reinforced concrete, among others.
The sculptural installation "APOLO PARADÍS ARTIFICIAL", exhibited in the corridor between La (2) and La (3), wants to reflect the natural artificiality in which we live. Composed of 10 bas-reliefs of recycled beaten aluminum, surrounded by a tricolored stainless steel mesh and framed by a string of LED lights, it explores the attraction of the human being to the product of his technical work.
"LA FITO. CANTAR COMO UNA CURA POSIBLE" DE FITO CONESA
Fito Conesa is a multifaceted artist who works with art installation and visual and sound elements who presents "La Fito. Cantar como una cura posible", where he pays tribute to the references that have shaped and guided him throughout his life and that led him to the city of Barcelona.
The bathrooms of Apolo will host two sound reinterpretations created by himself and reproduced on loop that are inspired by the figure of Paco España, one of the pioneers of transformism who gained great popularity during the spanish Transition.
For the author, the creation "is a kind of conceptual exorcism" in which he recalls the invisible and silent lives of a past that, nevertheless, have also forged the character of the city.
A C
Ada Morales and Carla Puig are two young artists united under the nickname "A C" (I see), in relation to the light and installation resources they work with.
The work VERS(U)S consists of two light installations that want to establish a dialogue between industry and nature and how light affects our emotions and transforms spaces.
The first concept design as a team was in the courtyard of the LAB 36 gallery; a joint process that has evolved inside Apolo, invading the corridor between the Hall and La (2) of atmospheric phenomena.