Zimoun: Rotations, BACKLIT gallery, Nottingham

Cardboard, metal and wire and other everyday objects play their role in creating the simple and functional displays of Zimoun’s (b.1977) new exhibition, Rotations, at the BACKLIT gallery until Tuesday 31 December. His first solo exhibition in England, the Swiss artist builds architecturally-minded platforms of sound, unique installations that fuse the visual, sonic and special elements together.

Exploring the mechanical rhythm and flow in prepared systems, his installations incorporate commonplace industrial objects in an obsessive display of basic and utilitarian materials. Articulating the tensions between the orderly patterns of Modernism and the chaotic forces of life, Zimoun’s work hums with natural phenomena and a frenetic pace of modernity. Concerned with echoing out and filling up space, finding a practical object’s attunement and harmony within a building structure, this show brings hearing and music into one’s appreciation for and exploration of art in geographical place.

Always adapting each exhibition to inhabit the spaces they find themselves in, Rotations features a brand new installation depicting Nottingham’s lace heritage. Made up of seven or eight different noises created using a cardboard box, a motor and a ball hitting each four corners of the box, the sounds of the exhibit have been described as evocative of the machinery used in the textile industry, in a way that combines vision, sound, history and a sense of heritage in thought-provoking ways. A sensory experience that is giant, immersive and discoverable, Zimoun locks the banal and domestic into dialogue with the sculptural, installatory and creative in this rare chance to see him in the UK.

Rotations, until 31 December, BACKLIT gallery, Alfred House, Ashley Street, Nottingham, NG3 1JG.

Credits
1. 200 prepared dc-motors, 2000 cardboard elemens 70x70cm, Zimoun in collaboration with Architect Hannes Zweifel 2011, Motors, power supply, circuitry wire, cardboard. Installation view: Contemporary Art Museum MNAC Bucharest, Romania. Dimensions: 14.7 x 49.2 x 29.5 ft / 4.5 x 15 x 9m Photography by Zimoun ©