NOT VITAL
SCULPTURE 1986 - 2013
Galerie Andrea Caratsch
via Serlas 12 - St. Moritz 5/7/2014 - 13/9/2013
Not Vital, an artist and modern-day nomad with roots in the town of Sent in the Lower Engadine Valley, creates his sculptures in studios scattered across the globe, in New York, Lucca, Agadez, Patagonia, Sent, and recently Beijing. Fascinated and inspired by life in this flourishing center of art in China, Vital has maintained his own studio in Beijing for the past five years.
Galerie Andrea Caratsch is celebrating the opening of its second gallery in St. Moritz with a survey of Not Vital’s work from 1986 to 2013. At the gallery on Via Serlas 12, which features three voluminous, modern exhibition spaces with large windows, a total of 20 sculptures and large-format drawings by the internationally successful Swiss artist will be presented.
Sculptures in white, gray, black and gleaming metal reveal the laws and ancient secrets of the circle of life and death.
Vital takes his inspiration from nature, its forms and materials, and presents his artworks as objets trouvés whose vitality stems from their natural qualities and the interaction between culture and nature.
The mountainous landscape and culture of the Engadine Valley is always present, but the works also reveal connections to faraway continents. Vital’s sculptures can be interpreted beyond the boundaries of any single culture, since they deal with the existential and are visually impressive as sensory artworks.
Not Vital is a master of making visible and simultaneously nobilitating organic forms and utility objects.
However, what is actually visible often becomes evident through what is not visible, the consciously hidden. This is the case, for instance, when the actual subject matter and significance of a 40-kilogram silver cube is only specified by its title, Troupeau, and its materials, silver and bones, thus making the viewer, whether an art connoisseur or a goat herder, the one who sees: the gleaming silver monolith turns out to be a sarcophagus, and artificially refined goat bones are a celebration of life.
It is the subtle interplay between the visible and the invisible, between form and content, nature and culture, that makes Not Vital’s oeuvre particularly appealing.
SCULPTURE 1986 - 2013
Galerie Andrea Caratsch
via Serlas 12 - St. Moritz 5/7/2014 - 13/9/2013
Not Vital, an artist and modern-day nomad with roots in the town of Sent in the Lower Engadine Valley, creates his sculptures in studios scattered across the globe, in New York, Lucca, Agadez, Patagonia, Sent, and recently Beijing. Fascinated and inspired by life in this flourishing center of art in China, Vital has maintained his own studio in Beijing for the past five years.
Galerie Andrea Caratsch is celebrating the opening of its second gallery in St. Moritz with a survey of Not Vital’s work from 1986 to 2013. At the gallery on Via Serlas 12, which features three voluminous, modern exhibition spaces with large windows, a total of 20 sculptures and large-format drawings by the internationally successful Swiss artist will be presented.
Sculptures in white, gray, black and gleaming metal reveal the laws and ancient secrets of the circle of life and death.
Vital takes his inspiration from nature, its forms and materials, and presents his artworks as objets trouvés whose vitality stems from their natural qualities and the interaction between culture and nature.
The mountainous landscape and culture of the Engadine Valley is always present, but the works also reveal connections to faraway continents. Vital’s sculptures can be interpreted beyond the boundaries of any single culture, since they deal with the existential and are visually impressive as sensory artworks.
Not Vital is a master of making visible and simultaneously nobilitating organic forms and utility objects.
However, what is actually visible often becomes evident through what is not visible, the consciously hidden. This is the case, for instance, when the actual subject matter and significance of a 40-kilogram silver cube is only specified by its title, Troupeau, and its materials, silver and bones, thus making the viewer, whether an art connoisseur or a goat herder, the one who sees: the gleaming silver monolith turns out to be a sarcophagus, and artificially refined goat bones are a celebration of life.
It is the subtle interplay between the visible and the invisible, between form and content, nature and culture, that makes Not Vital’s oeuvre particularly appealing.
Fine materials such as marble, gold, silver and
stainless steel are used alongside “poor” materials such as bones, plastic, wood
and plaster in the manner of Arte Povera. The texture of the materials and the
unusual formal language are striking.
Year after year, the nomad returns to Sent, the source of his creative power, this summer with a survey of his work at the new Galerie Andrea Caratsch in St. Moritz.
Year after year, the nomad returns to Sent, the source of his creative power, this summer with a survey of his work at the new Galerie Andrea Caratsch in St. Moritz.
