Zimoun
[1] Through the use of industrial objects and found materials, Zimoun's work reconsiders the place technology holds in daily life, conjuring nostalgia for obsolete devices.
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.
"[4] Or, as bitforms gallery explains, "Zimoun builds architecturally-minded platforms of sound to explore mechanical rhythm and flow in prepared systems.
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".
[4] According to creative director of Holo magazine Alexander Scholz, "Visually, the Swiss artist Zimoun's kinetic sculptures are architectural manifestations of the machine age: hundreds of simple, meticulously assembled, and methodically distributed contraptions whir away in concert.
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.
"[6] Regarding often used elements of chance in his work, Zimoun explains in an interview (2011), "I'm interested in a mix of living structures on the one hand, and control about decisions and details on the other.
"[1] Featured in the group show, Nostalgia Machines (2011) at David Winton Bell Gallery, 150 prepared dc-motors, filler wire 1.0 mm.
As Maya Allison, curator of Zimoun's solo exhibition at NYUAD Gallery in Abu Dhabi (2019) and group exhibition Nostalgia Machines (2011) at David Winton Bell Gallery, (2011) explains, "the meeting between materials, meticulously arranged in a large room, not only intervenes spatially, through modular and repetitive visuality, it also confronts us with the magnificence and evocative power of sound.
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 without embellishment or additional colour.
As Hannah Daly of Art Slant notes, "the effect is initially so ambient, so close to the near constant aural din we intake at every moment, you could miss it.
The piece 600 Prepared DC-Motors, 58 kg wood, 2017 (in Zimoun's work, titles are never anything but a strict description of the materials used) comprises 600 mechanically activated wooden rods and is part of the discourse devoted to passing time.
Largely related to his sound sculptures are Zimoun's audio works, often engineered with a similar variety of found industrial and natural materials.
Zimoun's work was a success at first in his hometown of Bern, where Don Li, a Swiss composer and musician, showed it in his art space TONUS-MUSIC Labor several times (2000, 2001, 2002).
