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HOLY MOLY KEN APTEKAR “ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPTS”Le Clezio Gallery, Paris, France Opening March 5, 2026, from 5PM to 9PM in the presence of the artist, continues through April 17, 2026

SOLO SHOW OF KEN APTEKAR, PARIS DRAWING NOW, Inception Section, Booth IN5, March 26-29, 2026, Carreau du Temple, Paris, France

Opening at Le Clezio Gallery, Paris, MARCH 5, 2026, from 5pm to 9pm in the presence of the artist

Solo Show in Paris Drawing Now Art Fair, Inception Section, Booth IN5, March 26-March 29, 2026

Presented for the first time in France, the series “Illuminated Manuscripts in the Age of Social Media and Texting” took shape in 2020 during the lockdown that Ken Aptekar experienced in Burgundy, France.

In this body of work, the artist reactivates the tradition of medieval illumination—painted initials, structured margins, ornamental motifs, grold and silver leaf—not out of nostalgia, but as a critical device. This ancient grammar is paired with the most unstable signs of our present: notifications, fragments of instant messaging, social media, and digital typography. This confrontation brings into tension two regimes of attention: the attentive slowness of the manuscript and the reactive speed of digital flows.

Heir to the inquiries of Art & Language, Ken Aptekar places text at the center of perceptual experience. Here, wiring does not cation the image; it governs it, compelling the viewer to read in order to see. By sacralizing fagments of ordinary language through structures inspired by the liturgical, the artist reveals the symbolic weight of our daily exchanges. Beneath the irony emerges a reflection on the act of reading, reaffirmed as a demanding, durational experience in which ornament becomes a vehicle of meaning.