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APOTEK


Group exhibition
curated by K.O.S A
with Wenkai Xu, Damla Kilickiran, Marius Engh, Marit Følstad

Directly and indirectly, the topic of the exhibition APOTEK are the unexplainable effects of placebos, pharmaceutically inert substances that apparently provoke curative physiological changes in the human body. Placebo and its effects are subjects of numerous and extensive investigations by modern medical science. Belief in the credibility of its methodologies and processes allows science the singular opportunity to pursue the affordance of placebo and attempt to illuminate its role in the domain of material reality.

KOSA’s decision to gather a project elaborating its phenomena rests on the hypothesis that the placebo effect, as it is currently unveiled, is the faculty of art – an agency of imaginations in confluence and in dynamism with their contexts. With that in mind, it is reasonable to propose that from the human perspective, all life’s arts, broadly viewed, are subject to and of the placebo effect; that the world organism is a concert of its innumerable material imaginariums.

APOTEK is a study of material objects and biopsychophysical relations that take place in three settings at KOSA. Two are inside Kruthuset and one is in the Jane pavilion. The works exhibited in the large space at Krutthuset form a kind of agora, while the balcony overlooking it presents works in a more intimate, cabinet atmosphere. Inside Jane is the ‘placebo reading room'.

The facade of the Jane pavilion is part of a second parallel trilogy, a painting project that extends from June through October this year. In part two of its three phases, during the month of September, JANE TRILOGY merges with APOTEK. During that time, Jane’s facade is a painting and the painting comprises a sculpture that contains a reading room.

APOTEK is a side by side gathering of individuals and groups, of practicing artists, students, architects, teachers, surgeons, sisters, mothers, daughters, fathers, sons. It gathers their materials and works, remnants from their past and the not yet future to exhibit the claim that placebo is the transmutational agency of art. Works are combined and new works come into being when constellations of primary and tertiary matter are brought to react to one another in their contexts and sites.

September 
9th – 30th, 2023  

K.O.S A   
Krutthuset Oslo SA 
Gamle Maridalsvei 128
0890 Oslo
kosa@krutthuset.com

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