Michel Kapelli was raised in an urban environment. After art school in Switzerland and his years of travel, he lived in a remote place in Finland. His fascination for transformation in nature influenced his focus in his artistic concepts. As in his first-prize-winning project of a national art-on-building competition, the environment took part in the structure of the building.
Back in Switzerland, he fused the urban aspects with structures of nature. With materials like silicon and PVC he built organic structures. Even for printing, by tradition an extremely exact way to create multiples, he created soft printing blocks of silicone to achieve various results from print to print.
The aspect of time as a guide-line for transformation appeared in his first works of manipulated urban sounds. The original sound of a scene was gradually decelerated. The recipient was guided from a known environment to a transformed circumstance, where the now slowed, alienated sounds were received as intensified images created by ones own source of memory.
At the exhibition in a neo-gothic church, organized by the famous gallery owner Diego Stampa, the Director of the Basle Art Hall Peter Pakesch and the priest Felix Felix, the concept of transformation of Michel Kapelli’s former soundscapes was adapted to a corridor of twelve three-dimensional 17 feet high pictures. The pictures were made of sculpted heavy plastic sheets. Starting from a human figure, the development from one image to the next, led from a surface zoomed more and more into detail, until it reached the structure of a microscopic world.
What was divided into sequences of evolution in his sculptural “paintings” was later compressed to layers of painted transparency film, combined to single three-dimensional pictures.
The different conditions of presence found a new intensity in his light performances: he painted with a colored torchlight in a darkened room. The sound of a decelerated everyday scene was the guide-line for the evolution of the image. The sum of all the movements of light was captured on the film of a camera with a constantly open shutter. The final image captured by another camera on Polaroid, was then shown to the public.
The experiments with light and sound led also to performative sculpting and combinations of words and pictorial metaphor.
What were artistic concepts of deceleration and transformed visions, suddenly found their parallel line in the own experience of a road accident. The intensity of crossing a borderline between different conditions of consciousness resulted in a new artistic focus on uncharted spaces beyond known surfaces.
Water as one of the most important elements became his new field of experiments – with stunning results.
His vision could be titled: Crossing the Threshold.
Michel Kapelli has won several prizes. His works are found in many public buildings and collections. The first presentation in a museum exhibition was at Museum Tinguely in Basle, Switzerland.
He lives in a remote village in France. He is member of the French artist assosiation Maison des Artistes.