Apparatus Projects is pleased to announce Jamais vu, featuring the work of Thomas Huston and Will Krauland. Opposed to the common phenomena of Déjà vu, Jamais Vu describes the uncanny sensation of seeing something for the first time, despite knowing that it is not new. The sensation usually deals with habitual environments, moments in time that are lost to memory because they are reoccurring. Despite the falsity of Déjà vu and Jamais vu realizations, these moments bring us out of our ever more automated existences. Whether the breaking up of reality is done so through drawing, repurposing, accumulation to the point of breaking, etc. one must constantly question the systems at play in one’s life.
Jamais vu features work that questions systems in both obvious and subtle ways. Perhaps what is most at stake in this exhibit is the idea of the archive. The archive is an interesting convergence of romantic sensibility under the strict methodology of classical thinking and ordering. Museums and institutional collections control and substantiate the histories and beings of objects. Stemming from the less formal, subjective and colonialist idea of the “cabinet of curiosities”, objects and images have undergone a complex changing of value in the setting of the archive. Why should we build such strong and simplistic narratives around all these objects and images? Instead of aggressively controlling and limiting these things, why not explore the other side of the spectrum? Objects and images hold vastly complex histories and narratives that one can only briefly glimpse. Like hitting a patch of ice on the highway and spinning out, except the spinning does not stop. You continue down the highway, but you have lost reference of direction. A lost sense of purpose. You see the road only briefly and instead begin to notice everything but the road. It is this threshold of anxiety surrounding an object or image that this show aims at examining. Laterally drifting through our understanding of things that surround us—of things we create.

Thomas Huston is an interdisciplinary artist living and working in Chicago, IL. He received his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and his BA from Oberlin College. Some recent exhibitions include: Kelly Lloyd’s Up like a sun, down like a pancake at the Institute for Contemporary Art, Baltimore (2018), Cathy’s Hsiao’s Movement 1, Bloom at Goldfinch, Chicago (2018), Let Me Be an Object that Screams at Gallery 400, curated by Matt Morris (2017), Y at EXPO Chicago, curated by Edra Soto (2016), TEAM SPORTS with Risa Recio at Samuel, Chicago (2016), and Steady State at CARUS, Cleveland (2016). He currently works as an art handler in the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Art Institute of Chicago. His mother is a priest and his father is an ecologist.

Will Krauland (b. 1995, Washington, DC) is an artist living in Chicago, IL. He received his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Some recent exhibitions and performances include: The Terrain Biennial, hosted by Kelly Kaczynski (2017), Location at The Radius (2017), Come but please don’t stay curated by Evelyn Sum (2016), and Open ’til tomorrow at Red Door Gallery (2016).

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_.

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Tags: Apparatus Projects, Chicago, Jamais vu, Lincoln Square, Thomas Huston, Will Krauland