Ornamental Moulded Relief
Performance
Caterina De Nicola detail of “Of Going Nowhere (black bullhead)”, 2023.
In the sound performance Ornamental Moulded Relief, Caterina De Nicola will diffuse and control extremely saturated sounds and unpredictable feedbacks through the room of Kunstverein Gartenhaus. The micro-movements of an oscillating sphere will be amplified back and forth within the space, evoking its constrained motion, a continuous return, the melancholy of past emotions, the difficulty of facing the future, and the feeling of being trapped in a reality that seems to offer no way out. This stasis reflects a postmodern condition, anchoring itself in cycles of persistent returns and a past that seems eternally recurring. The concept of return and the associated melancholy reflect a sense of perpetual regression to previous forms, styles, and ideas.
Ornamental Moulded Relief is the first event in the Intermezzo series.
Conceived to happen between shows, Intermezzo enhances the exhibition program of KUNSTVEREIN GARTENHAUS with performative interventions circling around sound, spoken word, dance and movement. The series is conceived by Lewon Heublein.
Lewon Heublein is a freelance curator associated with Tanzquartier Wien, writer and Co-Editor-in-Chief of PW-Magazine.
- Caterina De Nicola
Caterina De Nicola (1991) is a visual artist and musician born in Ortona (Italy) and based in Zurich (Switzerland). She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera in Milan and ECAL in Lausanne. Her practice involves fiction, writing, sound and object investigation to shape formal and discursive patterns by developing an analysis of symbols and motifs, as well as their circulation in a larger cultural system. In her practice, post-postmodernist skepticism becomes a recurring mechanism through which generic image symbols allow us to feel part of a common and undifferentiated social environment. Caterina De Nicola’s noise music draws inspiration from diverse sub-genres characterized by fast and violent staccato rhythms, drone, and atmospheric deprivation, pushing the boundaries of no-fi aesthetics to their extreme. Selection of solo exhibitions: Istituto Svizzero (Milan), Baleno International (Rome), Chickentown (Zurich), Il Colorificio (Milan). Her performances had been invited by Sonic Matters Festival (Zurich), Biennale Son (Sion), Perrrformat (Zurich) a.o. She is selected for the Swiss Art Awards 2024.
Caterina De Nicola, Untitled, 2023.