THOMAS ZIPP
Comparative Investigation about the Disposition of the Width of a Circle
A project by KAI 10 | Arthena Foundation, Düsseldorf at Palazzo Rossini
Campo Manin, San Marco 4013, I-30123 Venice (between Rialto Bridge and Accademia)
Curator: Zdenek Felix
Exhibtion dates:
June 1 –November 24, 2013
Open daily: 10am – 18pm, Tuesday closed
The director, Massimiliano Gioni, selected the project proposed by Arthena Foundation, Düsseldorf, from amongst the submissions for ‘Collateral Events’ for participation in this year’s 55th Venice Biennale. The comprehensive staging in the Palazzo Rossini by Thomas Zipp comprises an expansive installation entitled, Comparative Investigation about the Disposition of the Width of a Circle.
With this complex title, Thomas Zipp opens up two levels of meaning. On the one hand, it refers to the lyrics of ‘The Width of a Circle’ from 1970 by the English musician, David Bowie; on the other, to the phenomenon of research onto hysteria. Bowie, himself, referred in his lyrics to various parables and themes in Friedrich Nietzsche’s ‘Thus Spoke Zarathustra’, whereby he was mainly interested in his sexual relationship with his ‘Devil’, drugs.
The project simultaneously references the French term, ‘l’arc de cercle’, as coined in the second half of the 19th century in the famous hospital for the insane, ‘Salpêtrière’, near Paris. Thomas Zipp focuses on the transformation of such an invention to a ‘quasi-artistic’ level, comparable to David Bowie and his irrefutable ‘sexual relationship’ to drugs.
In Thomas Zipp’s installation, a version of a research institute is to be shown that will not solely deal with hysteria but also with the duality in one person (schizophrenia) - in this case the artist, who will be doctor and patient simultaneously. The ‘research institute’ developed by Zipp encompasses eight parts, which concurrently stand for the rooms of a fictional psychiatric clinic: reception, director’s office, library, treatment room, bedroom, auditorium, anger room and hallway.
Zipp, once described as the ‘psychonaut of art’, explores the unconscious in all its forms in his projects and installations. His dark aesthetic includes the effects of drugs, the suggestion of heavy metal music, the boundaries of philosophy and religion as well as the hidden areas of psychiatry and psychopathology. The complex character of Zipp’s works has almost encyclopaedic dimensions which will be given expression in his exhibition in the Palazzo Rossini.
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