Events

Simon Senn at ArcoMadrid (Jerome Zodo Contemporary Gallery)

webmaster 22-01-2011

Milan: The Jerome Zodo Contemporary gallery of Milan will take part in ArcoMadrid 2011 (stand10F03, pavilion 10) for the first time ever this year. At the Opening program Young European Galleries, the gallery will present two works by Simon Senn, one of the young European artists with the greatest international impact at present.

L’hôtel des sapins(2008, high-definition interactive video, 13 min.), and Bronxdale (2010, video installation, HD video, 3 min.), are the titles of the works in which Senn explores group dynamics and individual behavior of humans.

L'hôtel des sapins(2008) shows six young people in an abandoned building; they are naked with their faces covered, they have been numbered and each of them was given a video camera. The only guideline set by the artist was that each of them tries to film the rest avoiding being shot by the other cameras. The fact that all of the protagonists are wearing masks and are walking in an abandoned, cold territory, partly covered by snow establishes associations with dangerous areas, violence and terrorism. By having their faces covered, they hide part of their identity building a distance, but, at the same time, being naked makes them vulnerable. Together with the six cameras of the protagonists, other four fixed cameras are recording the scene. The ten resulting videos were carefully synchronized and edited into a single interactive video in which the spectator can navigate choosing different points of view with a remote control. Following the same precepts, Bronxdale includes a selection of recordings of young people’s aggressive reactions to provoking questions that the viewer will discover later, on the screen.

Simon Senn (Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, 1986) lives and works in Geneva (www.simonsenn.com). He studied at HEAD, Geneva University of Art and Design. He has made individual exhibitions of his work at CACT (Centro d’Arte Contemporanea del Ticino, Bellinzona, Switzerland), and at Galerie Nicola von Senger, Zúrich, Switzerland. His materials have been included in collective exhibitions as well by Jerome Zodo Contemporary; Kunstmuseum Bern, Centro per l’Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Prato, Italy, among others.

Senn is currently involved in a series of projects whose main topic is the relationship with the media, including television, journalism, radio or internet that shape or have an influence on public opinion. He goes beyond them as he states the following questions: How do images produced by information systems affect our relationship with society? And also, how does our relationship with society acquire economic value? What is sold? What is bought?

In addition to Simon Senn, other Jerome Zodo Contemporary’s artists are: Terry Chatkupt (U.S., 1977: www.terrychatkupt.com); Zackary Drucker (1983: www.zackarydrucker.com), Ben Grasso (U.S. 1979: www.bengrasso.com); Tigran Khachatryan (Armenia, 1980); Oliver Lutz (1973: www.oliverlutz.com); Andrew Schoultz (U.S. 1975: www.andrewschoultz.com); Simmons & Burke: Case G. Simmons (U.S. 1983: www.simmonsandburke.com) and Andrew S. Burke (U.S., 1982); Bertold Stallmach (Lesotho, 1984: www.bertoldstallmach.com); Federico Solmi (Italia, 1973: www.federicosolmi.com); Eliezer Sonnenschein (Israel, 1967), and Fiammetta De Michele (Italy, 1984).

The founder of the young gallery’s project, Jérôme Zodo, commented on the initiative in an expanded text from which he took a the following fragment: “In an effort to create an organ that could be able to transform itself in a continuous and diverse way, the gallery becomes a laboratory and a gym for artistic creation, prepared to encourage reflection of participants, in an endless process of change that leads art to be mistaken as the experience of living. […]Jerome Zodo Contemporary is, above all, an instrument of communication thought as a living space and environment made up by the relations and exchange among people, objects and thoughts, expressions of a heterogeneous language with which contemporary art can be organized, represented and communicated.”

A fact showing that theory and practice go hand in hand in this gallery is the most recent exhibition box(e), where six international artists (Ben Grasso, Sebastian Diaz Morales, David Rathman, Denis Rouvre, Wainer Vaccari and Li Mei) explora and share the world of boxing and, in order to strengthen true cultural dimension, dialogue and the open character supported by the space, the opening (January 13) included a pugilism exhibition between two boxers.

Jerome Zodo Contemporary

Address: Via Lambro, 7. 20129 Milan. Italy

Tel.: +39 02 202 41 935

Fax: +39 02 202 44 861

Web: www.jerome-zodo.com

E-mail: info@jerome-zodo.com

Opening hours: Tuesday- Saturday from 10.00 to 19.00

Further information at:

www.jerome-zodo.com

www.simonsenn.com

www.ifema.es/ferias/arco/default.html

Source: Press Release