Artists: sstmrt
Exhibition title: Apartment 2016
Curated by: Pierre-Alexandre Mateos and Charles Teyssou
Venue: 21 rue Pierre Leroux, Paris, France
Date: February 13 – 27, 2016
Photography: Pascal Gambarte, images copyright and courtesy of the artists
Since July 2012 we have lived in a small flat on rue Pierre Leroux, Paris. Nice and well arranged, it featured the typical Parisian characteristics that one could expect: old parquet, cute mouldings and an horrible pipes system. In this apartment we have decided to organize an exhibition that would take the form of an installation conceived by sstmrt, a collective that has been building a visual archive of bodies research and its modifications on the eponymous website. Plastic masks, disturbing intimate videos and body dysmorphias have constituted most of the iconographic material of the show.
For apartment 2016, the collective has designed an immersive sound installation composed of various human noises from intense inhaling/exhaling exercises to female orgasms. On one of the bed the visitor could watch a surveillance video* taken of the same flat. Without any precise indication, it was possible to watch the inhabitants performing their daily routine apparently not troubled at all by the installation. Inspired by the atmosphere of Bruce Nauman’s Clown Torture and the Mystery Man of Lost Highway this installation puts notions such as facticity, surveillance and voyeurism at the core of this domestic life.
