Istituto Svizzero - Sede di Milano
19/04/2013
DRAFTSMEN’S FEST #2 – Lorenzo Bernet feat. Jan Vorisek – 19/04/2013, ISR_Milano
LORENZO BERNET feat. JAN VORISEK
For the second appointment, Lorenzo Bernet and Jan Vorisek present a site-specific work at the Swiss Institute in Milan, the result of shared research conducted amidst cables, looped recordings, drawings and live sounds.
Starting with a shared practice that finds expression in the more specifically gestural aspects typical of drawing (Bernet) and musical improv (Vorisek), the two Swiss artists, here for the first time together, have worked on the concept of exchange. Getting beyond the mere figurative representation of a sound score in imagery, the collaboration at the Swiss Institute focuses on the ways of translating digital sound tools – sampling, remixing and field recordings – into visual forms, and vice versa.
The result is an open device: drawing, overlaid on the surface of the display, and soundscape produce a space in which distinct moments, like the phase of production and the phase of reception, can meet.
Lorenzo Bernet (Zurich, 1986) is completing a MA at ZHdK (Zürcher Hochschule der Künste). His work analyzes work methods in systems of creative economies through the use of different media. His most recent exhibitions include the project “Distrattenzione, Online Performance & Edition” for www.no-floor.com; the solo shows “Twenty Something in Europe”, Pleasant, Copenhagen; “Regiopark – Studiolo Furniture” (with Yannic Joray), Kunsthalle Palazzo, Liestal, Switzerland.
Jan Vorisek (Zurich, 1987) studied photography at ZHdK. He works with sound and image through the production of materials that start with the relationship with space, which the artist presents in different formats like exhibitions, performances and events. More recently, he has shown in alternative and institutional spaces, like the Kunsthalle Zürich (with Emanuel Rossetti and Flavio Merlo) and APNews in Zurich. He has participated in group shows at Kunsthalle Bern and Kunsthalle Charlottenborg, Denmark. Vorisek is one of the founders and DJ in residence of the club H.O.M.E. (House Of Mixed Emotions) in Zurich (with Mathis Altmann and Lhaga Khoondor).
DRAFTSMEN’S FEST
The Draftsmen’s Fest is a display in progress that associates drawing – seen as direct gestural expression – with the production of sound. During each of the 4 events of the program in Milan, projects will be presented by Swiss and international artists and musicians, specially developed for the Swiss Institute in Milan.
The Draftsmen’s Fest examines the syncretic relationship between drawn imagery and sound, with particular focus on the intimate, confidential rapport that happens when the spectator is engaged in a frontal way: in a literal sense, and as a metaphor of the immediate impact the sound/image pairing can bring about. The artists and musicians invited to participate return to a practice that puts sound and sign into direct relation, full of mutual exchanges and references. This practice comes from a shared source of inspiration, namely the so-called Providence school and the successive episodes in the late 1990s and early 2000s of what was to become the symbolic place of a transnational movement, from the East Coast to the West Coast, Canada and Europe, by way of Japan: Fort Thunder, an abandoned industrial complex in Providence (Rhode Island, USA), occupied until 2001 by avant-garde musicians and artists, including Brian Ralph, Jim Drain, Brian Gibson and Brian Chippendale of Lighting Bolt, and Hisham Akira Bharoocha of Black Dice.
Artists who straddle the settings, places, persons and project that, over time, have consolidated on the international cultural scene: starting with this scenario, Draftsmen’s Fest attempts to reveal a precise expressive hemisphere, occupying the spaces of the Swiss Institute in Milan with sound and signs.
Curators
Francesco de Figueiredo is the Art Director of Nero, a magazine of contemporary culture and a publishing house specializing in artists’ books, of which he is co-founder. With Valerio Mattioli, he is part of the music project “Heroin in Tahiti,” begun in Rome in 2010.
Massimiliano Bomba is an artist who works with video and installation. In 2006 he founded RAWRAW Edizioni, a publishing project for contemporary art. Since 2009, together with Francesco de Figueiredo and Valerio Mattioli, he has worked on the graphics and production of Rainforest, a music project and series of artists’ publications, which began in Rome in 2008. He lives and works in Milan and Rome.
Media partner
NERO