ZIMOUN

#soundinstallations #Zimoun @studiozimoun

Nina Naok: „Zimoun creates immersive site-specific sound installations, built mainly from recycled materials drawn from everyday life and industry. Through hand-made mechanical systems, he sets these materials in motion, causing them to resonate and transforming entire spaces into breathing environments. Often, he employs hundreds of orchestrated, motor-driven, minimalist devices to take over art spaces and museums of contemporary art. Through scratching, scraping, knocking, vibrating, and other collisions of materials, they generate three-dimensional soundscapes.

With the most modest materials, Zimoun creates large-scale artworks practically producing no waste: after each exhibition, the materials are reused—either to create new artworks, or to live on in other contexts.

His installations draw connections not only to nature and organic phenomena, but also to our throwaway society, to the systems of power that enclose us, to automated processes, industrialization, and the advancing robotization of our world, as well as to socio-critical, philosophical and psychological themes—for instance, pareidolia, where the brain seems to perceive patterns that do not actually exist, leading us to reflect on perception, reality and existence.

Despite their simple mechanical construction, the artist’s works evolve into striking complexity. They invite us to observe—making us attentive to visual and acoustic phenomena. His installations unfold condensed, hypnotic atmospheres, often with a psychedelic quality and presence, yet also with a touch of humor and irony hidden in their relentless persistence and absurdity. They might animate and activate us to reflect on ourselves and the world around us.

Zimoun understands 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’. His works are often described as materialized poetry and allow us to lose and find ourselves in the present moment.“