Apparatus Projects is pleased to announce Participation Trophies, an exhibition of work by Jacqueline Surdell. Through an intuitive approach to the material and structural supports of athletic, artistic, and banal labors Surdell’s work seeks to address the afterglow of action and participation in various systems of exchange. Where labor is either obscured, hidden, or treated as spectacle Surdell addresses the material reality of the objects that index the absence or speculation of labor’s occurrence. These forms seemingly exist either pre-emptively or merely materialize as a product of the act. Participation Trophies plumbs the depths and merits of these objects, as well as the myriad associations, memories, and agencies contained therein. Where a patch of gymnasium flooring finds itself dislocated from its larger architectural and institutional bearings, human and fabricated hair commingle together in piles and patties complicate one another’s source and senses of facsimile and function, they all find place in the role of a remainder – a surplus or excess of being, deserving of recognition for nothing more than showing up. These dislocated entities and discarded things each hint at labors past, present, and future. Surdell’s sculptures engage with the infrastructural and incidental (the portions of labor that undergird and allow for its completion) along with the objects indicative of its completion, and the phantom vitality that accompanies their existence afterward. The objects and forms assembled through this exhibition each bear a certain relationship to their own kind of disarticulation, allowing for new possibilities in their material lifespan – things do not simply decompose following disuse – and for novel insights and perceptions to be drawn upon later encounters with them in their full expression beyond their (re)presentation in the immediate sphere as art object.

Apparatus Projects is located in a dining room in Lincoln Square and is open by appointment only. Please call or text 219.241.6303 for entry, or ring the buzzer upon arrival. To set up an appointment email us at apparatusprojects.chi@gmail.com or direct message us on Instagram @_apparatus_projects_.

Jacqueline Surdell is an interdisciplinary artist and former collegiate athlete. Surdell’s practice draws from an ideology of rigorous discipline and directed stamina defining her athletic career as a lens for translation, interpretation and abstraction of the contemporary body. Through sculpture, performance, video, photography, and installation, Surdell’s work examines the friction between wide-reaching cultural and socio-political narratives defined and complicated by intimate personal histories or encounters.

Surdell’s work has been shown at South Bend Museum of Art, Chicago Artist Coalition, Western Exhibitions, Chicago; Union League Club, Chicago; Lithium Gallery, Chicago; Sullivan Galleries, Chicago; Cleve Carney Art Gallery, Glen Ellyn; Boardwalk Gallery, Los Angeles; Weingart Gallery, Los Angeles; and Galerie LeRoyer, Montreal. Surdell was awarded residencies at Ragdale, Lake Forest, IL, Acre Projects, Steuben, Wisconsin, and is currently a Hatch Projects Artist in Residence at Chicago Artists Coalition. Surdell earned her BFA with cum laude honors from Occidental College and her MFA from School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She lives and works in Chicago, IL.

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Tags: Apparatus Projects, Chicago, Jacqueline Surdell, Lincoln Square, Participation Trophies