INFERNO
One race.
Two ways of seeing.
MRRN x Inferno. 01.
Speed. Nerve. A line across the mountain. The Inferno downhill race is part of Mürren’s winter and part of its imagination. MRRN approaches it through two series, each with its own visual language.
In MRRN x Inferno, the mountain fills with devils, dragons and unlikely encounters. In NFRN 27, the race becomes a vocabulary of lines, gates, numbers and colour. Both begin with the same question: what does a descent leave behind, once the skier has passed?
MRRN x Inferno
How fast do you dare to be human?
A devil accompanies the skier. A dragon gathers behind them. Flames cut through the snow. These five works turn the tensions of the race into figures: courage, temptation, speed and the pull of the mountain.
The devil is a companion. It stands for a temptation familiar to alpine mythology: to be faster than wise, braver than safe, freer than sensible. The dragon gives form to the forces driving the skier. Flames in the snow turn a contradiction into an image.
These works are fragments of a visual memory: speed, fear, beauty and will arriving at the same moment.
NFRN 27
Inferno, reduced to its essentials.
A start becomes a short line. A gate becomes an opening. Speed emerges from spacing. A route becomes a decision.
NFRN 27 works with a deliberately limited vocabulary: white, black, signal red. Shape, line, number, rhythm and empty space. Three constants remain: NFRN. 27. MRRN. Everything else can change from one work to the next.
Fourteen works form this selection, beginning with the red title image. The name brings the real race into the world of MRRN. Inferno becomes NFRN. Mürren becomes MRRN. The event remains recognisable as its familiar surface falls away.
NFRN 27. Title image.
NFRN 27. Fourteen works. A race, reduced to its essentials.
Inferno is easy to picture. Snow. Mountains. Speed. People leaning into a descent. NFRN looks elsewhere.
It breaks the race down into elementary actions. A start is a line. A gate, an opening. Speed emerges from spacing. A route begins with a decision. A difference in height becomes two numbers.
A limited vocabulary
White, black and signal red. Shape, line, number, rhythm, empty space. Three constants remain: NFRN. 27. MRRN. Everything else can change from one work to the next.
The works do not follow the race as a report would. They isolate states: beginning, falling, following a line, gathering speed. A number fills a sheet. Gates narrow the space. Tracks converge and separate. The red title image sets the tone.
From race to sign
NFRN brings the real race into the world of MRRN. Inferno becomes NFRN. Mürren becomes MRRN. The event remains recognisable as its familiar surface falls away.
What remains is surprisingly little.
And quite a lot.
The series as a magazine
Fourteen works in white, black and signal red. The bilingual NFRN 27 magazine brings the series together across 20 interior pages with a matte softcover. CHF 30 plus shipping.