Pecked
Repeat, Pulse, Pecked Times Five
February 1- August 2021
SWB Experimenthaus Neubühl
Zurich, Switzerland
Repeat
Pulse
Janet Levy sculptor and curator was the resident of the SWB Experimenthaus Neubühl in Zurich, Switzerland from February 1 through August 31, 2021. Levy lived in the 1930’s modernist house in Neubühl, while creating and producing her work. She presented three projects engaging with her body of work Pecked, a reference to home, living and the act of moving. For her first project Levy presented Repeat an exhibition and dance performance with video in collaboration with choreographer and dancer Diane Gemsch an interaction with her sculptures and the house and her site-specific sculptural installation presented online at SWB Experimenthaus website. http://swb-experimenthaus-neubuehl.ch/
Repeat
As we navigate our lives in these times of a pandemic the question about home and living becomes even more pronounced. Janet Levy questions what is a home and what is the significance of home. As someone who moves around often, back and forth between countries. This repeat movement of collecting, rebuilding, recreating a home. similar actions as to a bird building a nest. Our environments are an exterior reflection of our interior worlds and the things we need and collect to feel comfort and safe to call a place home. In Repeat, Levy has collected objects from her surroundings to create a site-specific sculptural installation and the dancer Diance Gemsch created an emotional response by physically bringing this action to movement while engaging with the house and sculpture installation.
Haus
Janet Levy’s work references the female experience in connection to hidden emotions, desires, wounds and suppression. Regardless of the content and materials her work exposes and reveals in a solid form what is not seen. Her material of choice is stone which is always included in her works either with carved sculptures or installations. Continuing with her ongoing theme of making the “invisible visible”.
In Pulse, Levy relates her experience living in the modernist house SWB Experimenthaus Neubühl; she pays homage to surrealism and the artist Meret Oppenheim. Inspired by Oppenheim’s poem Für dich-wider and the female experience as an artist of the 30’s. Levy has created two new sculptures, Pulse and For all the singers above. Using found objects collected mostly from flea markets and thrift stores. Including onyx eggs, crystal quartz and desert roses stones. She has created two sculptural installations using original elements of the house: the telephone phone and the staircase handrails.
Pecked Times Five
The third project presentation for Janet Levy was a cumulation of work created during her six months stay at SWB Experimenthaus. Arriving in Switzerland in the middle of a pandemic contemplating the past year and a half. She reflects on house, home, living and what she has learned during this time from a perspective of looking inside out. The natural world has inspired her thoughts: Working intuitively observing and learning from the surrounding trees and birds. She has created site-specific installations and collage works using different materials, stone, branches, feathers, chain, bird beaks.
Experimenting for the first time with Cyanotype she created five collage diptychs on fabric. Levy will be presenting these collage diptychs with her Pecked collage series created from hundreds of cut out bird beaks, together with the sculptures and site-specific installation from Repeat and Haus will be on view through August 15, 2021.
Melissa Schade is an LA-based choreographer, dancer, and teacher. Some of her favorite projects include choreographing for Arcade Fire, Diplo, Big Dipper, Benjamin Booker, Twin Shadow, Cover Girl, Vivienne Westwood, Comedy Central, Bud Light, Fiat, Facebook, ENDHIV, and The Janky Christmas Show starring John C. Reilly. Recently she has been movement directing alongside photographer Ryan Mcginley for Vogue, Italian Vogue, Apple Music, and Abercrombie.
She has also enjoyed dancing for The Los Angeles Contemporary Dance Company, Acura, Foster the People, Colbie Caillat, Mr. Little Jeans, Big Black Delta, Basement Jaxx, Nina McNeely, Kate Hutter, Mecca Vazie Andrews, and of course Ryan Heffington. Melissa not only works as an assistant for Mr. Heffington, but as a dancer and beloved teacher at his LA-based studio, The Sweat Spot.
Repeat
Book Introduction
Looks Like Fire was conceived long ago — however, it was only last year in the presence of volcanic materials in the Museo de Geologia, UNAM, Mexico City, did it become clear that the theme of her work was active volcanoes. Since then, Levy have been on an intensive journey to discover the dynamics of the inner works of an active volcano. Sketching studies at Ace Hotel London’s artist residency and then climbing Stromboli and Etna to feel the energy the volcanoes generate, Levy’s knowledge is expanding: learning about what a hot spot is (a place within the mantle where rocks melt to create magma), the force of magma, that most of all the world’s active volcanoes are located in the Ring of Fire and a Harmonic Tremor is the release of seismic energy. She uses this phenomena of nature to compare emotions and sexuality that are otherwise difficult to reveal. As in her previous bodies of work, Bite Down and the ongoing Butterfly Double, The work is born from the deep desire to make the invisible visible, to show the hidden emotions of tension, pressure and desires. This is only the beginning of the research and studies, some of which are included here.
Book Designer Iván Martínez is a Mexico City based graphic designer, who joined the studio of Carlos Amorales in 2005 and since then he has collaborated with him in animation, installation works, typographic and editorial design. From 2013 to 2015 he studied in the master programme ArtEZ / Werkplaats Typografie. From 2016 to 2017 he worked as a researcher at the Jan van Eyck Academie (Maastricht/NL). He designed the catalogue «Life in the Folds» by Carlos Amorales for the pavilion of Mexico in the 57th Venice Biennale. For Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich, Switzerland. Iván Martínez developed a new corporate identity. He not only formed a new logo but invented a new graphic system and created a new typeface for the visual appearance.