One Bed, Two Blankets, Seventy-Six Rules
One Bed, Two Blankets, Seventy-Six Rules is the first collaboration between Sabine Hess and Nicolas Polli. After meeting in Ticino and continuing a long-distance relationship, the couple decided to move in together in 2023 and began a project about their life together. During an artistic residency in Val Verzasca, Hess & Polli built an imaginary house. Alternating between symbolic representations and dramatizations of their relationship, the project plays with the standards and ideas of a relationship, establishing rules for living harmoniously. For the Biennale Images Vevey, the couple are taking stock of their first year by continuing their work at La Becque | Résidence d’artistes. A new chapter in this personal manifesto of living together, this installation offers universal advice on the evolution of a loving relationship.
Sorry if I stole your place
Welcome aboard an extraordinary bus transformed into a work of art on the move!
The VMCV (Vevey-Montreux-Chillon-Villeneuve public transport operator) and Images Vevey are joining forces for the third time in a row to present remarkable artwork. The Swiss artist Nicolas Polli has created an interactive visual journey specifically for the Images Vevey Visual Arts Biennial, from 7 to 29 September 2024.
A banana grin, a spirit level for a fire engine, a giant snail brushing its teeth… For this itinerant exhibit, photographer and graphic designer Nicolas Polli puts a humorous spin on familiar objects. He carefully arranges the various elements, toying with their size, and superimposing and interweaving them to create an absurd motley composition.
Specifically devised for the Images Vevey Visual Arts Biennial, this project drew inspiration from fashion, product design, and advertising. It rethinks the conventional use of a bus, making it a means to promote art too. Nicolas Polli’s light-hearted and lyrical images reinterpret everyday objects, giving them new guises that transform their original function.
By taking things out of context, Sorry if I stole your place reshapes reality to make way for imagination. Embark on a voyage through unexpected images!
Sorry if I stole your place will be running until 29 September, giving passengers the chance to discover some of the exhibits at the Images Vevey Visual Arts Biennial while sitting comfortably in the bus. Watch out for the QR codes as they may reveal a few surprises!
When Strawberries Will Grow on Trees, I Will Kiss U
During three months of confinement in the spring of 2020, Nicolas Polli went through a period of profound solitude and uncertainty. He then drew on his artistic resources to stage this fragility that he had never felt so strongly. Confronting his enclosure, he frantically began to compose still life and images from everyday objects. His imagination challenges his doubts and desires. In his depopulated apartment, he gives meaning to banality. His own body also becomes the object of new attention: vulnerable, it demands a fantasized presence. Sensitivity is mixed with sensuality when Polli addresses short poems to an unknown, idealized and eroticized figure. Finally, his series When Strawberries Will Grow on Trees, I Will Kiss U paints a sincere and delicate portrait of a universal loneliness.
