Sylvain Croci-Torto
Silent Symphonies
19 September - 28 October 2021


Silent Symphonies 

If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves.

Pablo Neruda, Keeping Still (1974)


Bjorn & Gundorph Gallery is proud to present ‘Silent Symphonies’, the first solo exhibition introducing new paintings by Swiss artist Sylvain Croci-Torti (b. 1984).

Graduated from ECAL (École Cantonale d'Art de Lausanne) in 2013, Sylvain Croci-Torti now lives and works between Lausanne and Martigny. Inspired by the Swiss tradition of geometric, monochrome abstract painting, Croci-Torti’s works offer an intuitive, unconscious, and effortless approach to painting.

Borrowing one of the methods of silkscreen printing, Croci-Torti scrapes paint across his monochrome canvases. The color is laid down on broad surfaces, sometimes leaving an area unpainted, a tactile technique that captures the artist's movements within the canvas. About the process, he states: “What I am really interested in, is finding a unique protocol for spreading color on a surface. (...) If possible, deflecting an industrial technique to confront it with a gesture, with a human, not a machine.”

Focusing on the classic elements of contemporary painting, the repetitive strokes in the single-color surfaces allow a deeper contemplation for the observer, only interrupted by the negative spaces where the canvas appears. Deeply inspired by minimalistic music, he knows that color, like sound, is a mass with a density that can be worked with. Each painting is therefore composed like a piece of music, and each stroke has its own meditative rhythm - like a silent symphony, captured within the artwork.