MILAN — The signature seductive lighting Apparatus is known for set the tone for a De Chirico-esque curation Tuesday. The interiors firm reopened the doors of its renovated North McCadden Place gallery in Hollywood (after closing the space since November) to the public this week with surprising new silhouettes and influences.
“It’s about feeling discovery and moving through layers,” artistic director Gabriel Hendifar explained, adding that clients are escorted through the space like they are traveling along the skeleton of a Giorgio De Chirico painting. Through the freshly finished rooms and “layers of the subconscious via archways, avenues, and repeating forms and rich material variety, our story begins to unfold,” he added.
Cofounded in 2012 , Apparatus is renowned for spaces that celebrate small, nuanced details, and Hendifar’s talent for storytelling, creating a mood through lighting, furniture and objects. The Los Angeles location also has its own “distinct visual language,” the gallery said in a statement.
The entrance was designed as a modernist grotto, with textured rock aggregate walls. Throughout, the walls transform, starting with textured rock aggregate in the entrance, turning into silvered walls and walls made from case cork lining at the heart of the gallery. The firm’s flair for otherworldly lighting is demonstrated through its Cloud lamp, which is featured prominently. Crafted with featherweight spheres and suspended from a brass chain, it serves as a magical centerpiece, juxtaposed by the linear, tarnished silver and leather settee seating.
Born in Los Angeles, Hendifar studied theater costume and scenic design at UCLA and worked in fashion for almost a decade. His parents moved from Iran to L.A. in the late ’70s, and he has said that his Iranian-American story continues to live on through his work. Each of the studio’s carefully curated collections are designed at the headquarters in New York City, and brought to life at a dedicated Brooklyn factory.
The Hollywood gallery, which first opened in 2018, very much represents a return to the aesthete’s beginnings and his childhood, after years of creating a home in New York City.
“This return to roots is emblematic of how we function as a company — we design for change and time, embracing both inevitable factors, working in tandem with them, rather than against them. It’s this approach that assures whatever you take from us, you take for life,” Apparatus said in a statement.
A testament to its growing relevance in the interior design world, Apparatus opened its third gallery in Mayfair, London, in May, inspired by old members-only clubs. The gallery’s walls and floors were enriched with Italian Calacatta Classico marble and subtle, hand-troweled plaster.
Hendifar’s flair for creating new worlds in residential spaces is heavily influenced by film, music, visual art and human emotion. “I believe that the objects in our homes have the power to help us understand ourselves more clearly,” he told WWD last year.
