This book is published in conjunction with the exhibition Not Vital, Hanging and Waiting, held at Almine Rech Gallery Brussels, from January 14 to February 18, 2011.
Multi-media artist, designer, and architect, Not Vital has gained particular notoriety for his sculptures. Composed of plaster, bronze, marble, silver, and gold, and encompassing organic and ready-made materials, his sculptures feature motifs of animals and the natural world. Abstracting these subjects, the artist generates mutations, distorts scale, and experiments with the relationships between form and meaning. Through the juxtapositions of tensions and materials, his works are constantly in a process of beeing transformed into something else, they are the vehicles of a language in and of itself.
'Each work of art has its own vocabulary, and that of Not Vital has been global for a long time. While its source is to be found in the dialect of his native village in the Swiss canton of Grisons, it matured in New York in the 1980’s, before developing further in Africa and, most recently, in China and Patagonia. Although Not Vital’s artistic production is a language in and of itself, the tongue as organ has become its sculptural emblem: a vehicle which would take the shape of a totem rather than of a hunting trophy, even though the artist recalls that he first encounters with the local fauna, the foundation of his relation to the other, took place during his childhood when he used to accompany his father on his alpine battues.'
– Nicolas Trembley, Culture, nature & sculpture
42 pages
Softcover
English
Edition of 500
Almine Rech Gallery Editions