Äppärat at Ballroom Marfa

Äppärät is a group exhibition curated by Tom Morton currently at Ballroom Marfa, open from September 25, 2015 to February 14, 2016.

This is a show about the mammalian hand, and the tools it touches, holds and uses. Taking its title from the name of a fictional, post-iPhone device at the centre of Gary Shteyngart’s 2010 near-future novel Super Sad True Love Story, Äppärät is concerned with labor, play and the uncertain zone between the two; with the extension of the body, and the self, through technologies ancient and contemporary; with things (to borrow Martin Heidegger’s formulation) “present-at” and “ready-to” hand; with compulsion and with death.

Featuring 13 artists from across Europe, the Americas, and Asia, from major art historical figures to practitioners in the early phase of their careers, including: Ed Atkins, Trisha Donnelly, Melvin Edwards, Cécile B. Evans, Jessie Flood-Paddock, Roger Hiorns, Sophie Jung, Lee Lozano, Marlie Mul, Damián Ortega, Charles Ray, Shimabuku, Paul Thek

Tom Morton is a curator, writer, and Contributing Editor of frieze, based in Rochester, UK. He was co-curator (with Lisa Le Feuvre) of the major travelling exhibition British Art Show 7: In the Days of the Comet (2010-2011), and has worked as a curator at the Hayward Gallery, London and Cubitt Gallery, London. He was co-curator of the 2008 Busan Biennale, and curated the exhibition How to Endure for the 2007 Athens Biennale. His recent exhibitions include British British Polish Polish at the CSW Ujadowski Castle, Warsaw (2013); and Panda Sex at State of Concept, Athens (2014). Morton’s writing has appeared in numerous exhibition catalogues, and in journals including frieze, Bidoun, and Metropolis M. He is working on his first novel.