Artwork by Zimoun | Installation view: Installation view: Art Basel, Switzerland. Commissioned by Sennheiser. © StudioZimoun | www.zimoun.net

"Using simple and functional components, Zimoun builds architecturally-minded platforms of sound. Exploring mechanical rhythm and flow in prepared systems, his installations incorporate commonplace industrial objects. In an obsessive display of simple and functional materials, these works articulate a tension between the orderly patterns of Modernism and the chaotic forces of life. Carrying an emotional depth, the acoustic hum of natural phenomena in Zimoun's minimalist constructions effortlessly reverberates." Laura Blereau

Zimoun lives and works in Bern, Switzerland. His work has been presented in Contemporary Art Museums internationally.

Zimoun is best known for his installative, generally site-specific, immersive works based on recycled materials. He employs mechanical principles of rotation and oscillation to put materials into motion and thus produce sounds. For this he principally uses simple materials from everyday life and industrial usage, such as cardboard, DC motors, cables, welding wire, wooden spars or ventilators. For his works Zimoun develops small apparatuses which, despite their fundamental simplicity, generate a tonal and visual complexity once activated – particularly when a large number of such mechanical contraptions, generally hundreds of them, are united and orchestrated in installations and sculptures.

Zimoun’s works continually embrace oppositional positions, such as the principles of order and chaos. Works may be arranged in a geometrical pattern or ordered and installed according to a system, yet they behave chaotically and act – within a carefully prepared framework of possibilities – in an uncontrolled manner as soon as they are mechanically activated. As if in a clinical study, the pattern and the systematic approach enable an overview, so that the chaos generated by the mechanical process can be better analysed. Mass and individuality also belong among these oppositional positions. The artist often employs a large number of identical elements, but each element develops its own individuality and unique nature through the dynamic interplay of mechanism, rotation and material. The mechanical elements, prepared by hand in the studio, which have a consistently reduced, minimalistic form, function and aesthetic, possess only apparent precision, because the manual production creates divergence from the ideal treatment of the material, allowing imprecisions that emphasise the emerging individual behaviour of the materials, enable it or indeed provoke it.

When naming his works Zimoun consistently follows the principle of listing the materials used one after another. With this he brings materials to the fore; in addition, the titles signal the ‘prepared’ mechanism, indicating the connection to intentionally tonally manipulated musical instruments. His works are often defined using the term of sound architectures, based on the principles of Minimal Music, to which he brings a visual aspect while insisting on a simple, reduced design often without embellishment or additional color.

Although Zimoun conceives of his installations as compositions in a musical sense, he does not actively intervene in the development of their sound. He does not direct the mechanical systems implemented either in an analogue manner or digitally, via a microcontroller or a computer, instead merely activating them by turning on or off their electricity supply. He sees the moment of activation and the dynamic of the materials themselves as a sculptural and performative approach and names the principle behind these works ‘primitive complexity’.

In addition to his installative compositions, Zimoun also develops purely acoustic works. Although the two genres – visual, un-controlled, accidental compositions and musical compositions for sound recording and performance that are laboriously constructed in the studio – may seem quite different at first, both emerge from the artist’s interest in creating spaces and acoustic states which are composed of microscopically small sounds and noises.

Text by Ulf Kallscheidt | Sikart Lexicon

More works & information:
www.zimoun.net

Most recent Compilation Video:
www.vimeo.com/7235817

Instagram:
www.instagram.com/studiozimoun

Bandcamp:
www.zimoun.bandcamp.com

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