In another interminable lockdown, the gentle winter colors are the clearest indications of time passing in Switzerland’s Engadin valley. But a show at Monica de Cardenas in Zuoz, a nearly monochrome town surrounded by the silent Alps, offers a very different atmosphere to the world outside: a vivid and humorous joint presentation of recent works by Nathalie du Pasquier and Alessandra Spranzi. The two artists’ aesthetics at first sight have little in common: Spranzi’s practice involves found images, often gleaned from unglamorous contexts such as manuals or the classified ads sections in daily newspapers, which she cuts out, rephotographs, crops, resizes, and upcycles into black-and-white silver gelatin prints, allowing herself to be “carried away by the gaze of others.” By uprooting her chosen photographs and washing out their primary meaning, Spranzi reveals the nonchalance with which one can alter and aestheticize the message carried by an image. In Mano con bicchiere rovesciato (L’insieme è nero) [Hand with Upturned Glass (The Whole is Black)] (all works 2020), a palm holds up an upside-down utensil against a dark background. The decontextualized action demonstrates how easily gestures can lose their value and be rendered absurd. A group of Spranzi’s black-and-white photographs shows …