Jan Vorisek “No Sun”

Swiss Institute Contemporary Art

[Image: Jan Vorisek "Untitled" (2021) Digital photo. Courtesy of the artist.]

This event has ended.

No Sun is the first institutional solo exhibition in the United States by Jan Vorisek, composed of new works commissioned by Swiss Institute. Vorisek works across sculpture, performance and sound to create autopoietic, site-specific installations that examine formal hierarchies through feedback, distortion and the delineation of space. In assemblages of accumulated found materials and sound-producing devices, he explores the fluctuation of noise as a medium for information. Split into two interrelated architectural interventions, the exhibition at SI is organized with experiences in mind that crossfade from corporeal to cerebral, increasing an awareness of the body in situ while evoking associative memories from the collective unconscious.

On the ground floor, Curved Passage consists of industrial strip curtains that are typically used for protection and safety in logistical buildings such as shipping warehouses. Emanating from a dark corridor, a low-frequency oscillator generates visceral tones that are composed randomly in real time. Within this tunnel the space becomes darker and the noise louder, culminating in a void where the feedback weaves information into itself and extends back from where it originated, overwriting what once was.

A curtained maze that encircles the second-floor gallery opens into a theater setting where Vorisek’s new video work, Dog Cloud, is projected. Taking the form of a soap opera turned cosmic horror story, it points to the unreality of the present in a surreal depiction of relationships, desires, and communication or its failures.

With its spatial composition of architectural passages, No Sun outlines a multitude of potential pathways and spiraling dead ends. Dramatizing deferral and perpetuating transition, the exhibition creates an experiential score which never climaxes and instead swings between lucidity and opaqueness, oppositions that eventually dissolve as light and sound permeate the space.

On the occasion of No Sun, Swiss Institute together with Czarnagora is pleased to present Erratic Shine, the first music record by Jan Vorisek, which is released as a double 7” vinyl in an edition of 100.

SI gratefully acknowledges the support of Pro Helvetia, Canton Basel-Stadt, Florian Gutzwiller, and Teo Schifferli. Production support for the exhibition is kindly provided in part by Galerie Bernhard.

This exhibition is organized by Alison Coplan, Curator, Swiss Institute.

Jan Vorisek (b. 1987, Basel) lives and works in Zurich. Recent solo exhibitions include Collapse Poem at Kunsthaus Glarus, Glarus (2020); Crisis Instrument at Observation Society presented by Bottom Space, Guangzhou (2018); and Total Fragmented Darkness at Hard Hat, Geneva (2017). Recently he has shown in group exhibitions at Kunstmuseum Bonn, Bonn (2020); Luma Westbau, Zurich (2019); Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Wien (2017); and Kunstverein Braunschweig, Braunschweig (2017).