Laconica: ZIMOUN
DATE: 10 October – 20 November 2026
Opening: Friday, 16 October, 6:00 pm
Zimoun (b. 1977 in Bern) is a Swiss 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.
This year, Laconica will comprise three events:
I. Zimoun’s solo exhibition “216 prepared dc-motors, cotton balls, cardboard boxes 50x50x50 cm, 2010/2026” at Pamėnkalnio Gallery (1 Pamėnkalnio St, Vilnius). Curator: Agnė Jonkutė. 16 October – 20 November 2026. Opening: 6:00 pm.
II. Group exhibition “Acoustic Density” at (AV17) Gallery (5 Totorių St, Vilnius). Artists: Arturas Bumšteinas, Elena Laurinavičiūtė, Alessandro Perini. Curator: Agnė Jonkutė. 22 October – 27 November 2026. Opening: 6:00 pm.
III. Audiovisual session “Sound Measure No. 1” at Pamėnkalnio Gallery (1 Pamėnkalnio St, Vilnius). Artists: Dainius Liškevičius, Šarūnas Nakas, Alla Zagaykevych (Ukraine). Curator: Šarūnas Nakas. 27 November 2026. Starts at 6:00 pm.
For the installation by Zimoun at Pamėnkalnio Gallery, 238 cardboard boxes were specially produced by Lithuanian packaging brand SUPERBOX. The repeated form of the boxes, together with the structure and materiality of the cardboard, becomes part of the installation, helping to create the relationship between space, movement, and sound that is characteristic of the artist’s work. “Packing Your Ideas” encapsulates SUPERBOX’s approach to packaging. Usually, this means creating a packaging solution for a particular product, gift, or idea. This time, the task was different: to produce boxes that would become the artist’s creative material. “What makes this collaboration interesting to us is seeing a very familiar material and form placed in an unexpected context. Every day, we work with corrugated cardboard as a raw material from which we create functional and aesthetically considered packaging. In Zimoun’s installation, those same boxes become part of an artwork. It reflects our motto very directly: sometimes you need to package an object, and sometimes you need to bring an idea to life,” says the SUPERBOX team.
Organised by: Pamėnkalnio Gallery
Project concept and artistic director: Kotryna Džilavjan
Curators: Agnė Jonkutė, Šarūnas Nakas
Graphic design: Jurgita Juodytė
Lead technician: Kazimieras Sližys
Technician: Matas Šatūnas
Group exhibition partner: (AV17) Gallery
Group exhibition architect: Danas Aleksa
Patron: SUPERBOX
Financed by: Lithuanian Council for Culture, Vilnius City, Konstnärsnämnden, Lithuanian Artists’ Association
With thanks to our neighbours: Elska Coffee, Ga11ery
