The installation artist Zimoun specialized in large-scale exhibits where substantial batteries of physical objects combine to make a lot out of a little, whether it’s ping pong balls, or springs, or cardboard boxes, or piano strings, or polyethylene tanks, or DC motors, or cotton balls — or, generally, two or more of those in combination. Experienced in person, the works take on a semi-lifelike, if not necessarily sentient, quality — that is, they are “generative” (in the sense that predates the near wholesale accession of that term by commercialized artificial intelligence). By contrast, Zimoun documents these with short videos that are, if you’ve seen the work close up, akin to a postcard representing a cross-country trip, not so much shorthand or short shrift as a considered encapsulation. Among his latest, from this still fairly new year, is “24 prepared dc-motors, 24 metal barrels, 265m piano strings” (the pieces usually have titles determined by their constituent parts), which summons up an orchestral drone, as the vibrating strings cause deep emanations from the metal drums.
