APPARATUS artistic director Gabriel Hendifar shares the backstory behind the L.A. flagship’s inspiring transformation.

APPARATUS founder Gabriel Hendifar at his brand’s reimagined Hollywood showroom

Each APPARATUS (apparatusstudio.com) gallery—New York, L.A. and London—has a distinct look. How did the L.A. space’s architecture inform the design?

The space was essentially an empty warehouse that had been used as a soundstage. In imagining how to create a journey through the space, I lean into the paintings of De Chirico and etchings of Escher as references. The arches help to create a sense of discovery as new volumes reveal themselves, and their repetition creates the impression that the space unfolds into infinity.

Why did you feel it was time for a “scene change”?

Our galleries are laboratories where we explore ourselves and our ideas. And as laboratories traditionally suggest, no one space is static. Experimentation and reinvention are constant. After six years, our Los Angeles gallery was ripe for reinvention when we began reimagining it last year.

Each part of the gallery is distinct, yet there’s a through line. How would you describe each section, and how do all of the rooms relate?

We leaned into a narrative— imagining the NY socialite protagonist of our last collection, ACT FOUR, moving to Los Angeles to find herself in the early ‘70s. All of the choices are about a feeling of discovery and moving through layers. Upon entering, you find yourself in our version of a modernist grotto, with rock aggregate walls, rough to the touch. A hard outer shell, if you will. Passing through this to the adjoining space, the textural overtones transform from rocky to reflective, with silvered walls. After the grounding of the first space, this functions as a release. Finally, we move from reflection to roots, in this case, cork, which lines the walls at the heart of the gallery. I see this progression as a map of self-discovery, in a way. APPARATUS pieces complete the narrative of each space, providing the moving parts— the apparatus, if you will—that make the machine function.

Lighting—and light—takes on different characteristics depending on many factors, one being the space where it is installed. How does the L.A. gallery complement the lighting?

[It] allows us a unique opportunity to create installations that take advantage of the soaring ceiling height and open space. We’ve created groupings of CLOUD, REPRISE and TRAPEZE fixtures, which take on an intergalactic feeling at this scale.

What new pieces are you especially excited about these days?

We are launching an evolution of our CYLINDER SERIES in May, which reimagines the collection as a modular system. I’m really excited about all of the possibilities this new concept proposes.

What’s next for you and APPARATUS?

So many things! We will have a Scene Change in our NY Gallery this May, alongside the launch of the new CYLINDER SYSTEM. I’ve just moved into a new apartment, and those projects are always the most inspiring laboratories for me. And we are in the process of developing our next big collection, ACT FIVE, which will launch in 2025. Never a dull moment