Laconica: ZIMOUN

ZIMOUN
“216 prepared dc-motors, cotton balls, cardboard boxes 50x50x50 cm, 2010/2026”

Opening: Friday, 16 October, 6:00 pm
On view until 20 November 2026
Admission is free

Zimoun (b. 1977 in Bern) is a Swiss artist, musician and composer who creates sound sculptures and sonic architectures. He grew up in a home where the sound of his mother playing the piano would wake him in the mornings, while the tools in his father’s workshop invited experimentation. Later, John Cage’s ideas about silence, noise, chance, and the value of the sounds that surround us became an important point of departure for his work.

In Zimoun’s practice, objects drawn from everyday life and industry are transformed into precisely constructed, unique sound structures. Box upon box, ball beside ball, movements and sounds shifting, overlapping and coinciding. Driven by a mechanical motor, each cotton ball strikes differently every time, making every voice in this sea of sound – or present-day organ – singular. We can enter this pulsating space, hear it, see it, spend time within it, leave it, and carry away our own experience.

This is the first presentation of Zimoun’s work in Lithuania and forms part of Laconica, an ongoing programme developed by Pamėnkalnio Gallery.

Laconica was conceived as a platform for artists who explore minimalist modes of expression in their work. The project understands minimalism broadly: rather than limiting itself to the tradition of Minimalism that emerged in the 1960s, it seeks out its characteristic principles of thought in contemporary artistic practices. These include the capacity of an idea and form to convey meaning, the conditional nature of narrative, economy of means, a critique of excess, and an ecology of thought.

Previous editions of Laconica explored the relationship between monochrome and minimalist poetry (2021) and the realm of colour and olfactory phenomena (2023). The third Laconica turns its attention to sound – a counterpoint to silence and pause, and a vehicle for immaterial experience. Within the project, sound becomes a conceptual layer of artistic language, connecting music, visual art, and interdisciplinary practices.