Zurich artist Roman Blumenthal is relocating his studio to the Perla-Mode premises on Langstrasse for a week. For his first solo exhibition, he is creating new sculptures and objects on site from cheaply bought, found or leftover materials. Roman Blumenthal combines cushions, fabric, paper, toys, plastic parts, waste and DIY store materials to create ad hoc art objects on the plinth. Once completed, the objects are given a title by the artist. He borrows the names from the extensive furniture catalogue of the low-cost supplier Conforama and its furniture collections with titles such as Arosa, Exit, Pepper, Monsun, Spirantic, First Weiss or Circus. The interchangeability and absurdity of the titles leave room for associations when looking at the sculptures.
There is a loving, melancholy subversion in Roman Blumenthal’s material collages – an ode to the useless and unnoticed and an attention to the texture and surface of materials – soft or crumpled, fibrous, rough, patterned, colourful or pale. The materials are increasingly reminiscent of human characteristics, the created objects and their assigned names become individual, unique pieces on the plinth in the art space.