It’s not a new gallery, it’s a one-bedroom apartment ︎︎︎ the day that won’t end with an exhibition




*visit physical space by appointment only



Founders:

Genova, Marina   
Vogel, Stefan
Dimitrov, Stefan



Contact:
hi@garaspace.art

As I was looking for a place and couldn’t find any I saw what my options were and came to understand that I have to start with the space I inhabit. Economics clearly delineated the boundaries for the possible course. What would happen if I invite artists to display their own works in this small area part of my home? I live with my dog in a one-room apartment: I cook, sleep, work and store art in those same 35 square meters. Living in such a “white cube” means you have to erase every trace of your existence – constantly. It’s an intense battle that you lose all the time. I taught myself to reside here without a lot of things. All my furniture became mobile and foldable in order to serve the space within irregular working hours. At the end of the day you sink into a bed illuminated by the lights of the gallery. Just three meters away is resting neon-lit art to which you can’t turn off the lamps so as to ease your soul and eyes. Tools piled on the floor, against the bedroom walls, all over the bathroom or next to my dog's bed. The "gallery office" full with kitchen utensils smells like fried eggs and cheese. There are not enough chairs to accommodate the artists or their audience, nor a round table on which to place a costly vase, as well as a shelf for catalogs, books and limited editions. A smartphone on a tripod, a kitchen showcase, a drawing table, a sink full of dishes, a stone, a Wi-Fi router, nearly dead plants, household products...


This is the background for creating relationships as well as dialogic transactions generated in an attempt to have a supposedly more casual meet. The space is a dauntingly tall but narrow niche that is appropriate for a more unified approach. Three spot lamps and four fluorescent tubes emit a neutral light that illuminates like the flames of an ancient fireplace. Left visible, cables and electronic ballasts power these cheap totems whose thin body stutters an illegible alphabet. Here lies the trace of the absent individual, left to our judgment, submerged between the telephone and the white wall. This space provides profile information on its temporary already former inhabitants, attributing a secret life to their mysterious "residence" - the clue subsequently placed under surveillance and accessible to anyone anywhere. These 35 square meters become a territory for artistic intervention where the objects provide more informal opportunities for interaction. They also mourn a loss: somewhere, someone, something is missing and nothing has a taste or meaning anymore. It is a pale, but hard feeling, very much like the monotonous weariness of artistic social life, that weary and muffled purr caused by a long continuous stay between the four white walls. Homes are strange creatures. Most of the time they survive their inhabitants. In a climate of mixed regression and rebellion, they occupy a strange and familiar empire of (the) middle, neither entirely public nor entirely private, a threshold space, an adolescent position equally distant from darkness and the realm of childhood. A place to call one’s own for a period of time.



Images