Not Vital, Rabbit Turning into a Cloud, 2009, plaster, cotton, fiberglass, 360 x 320 x 270 cm. |
A Reality Check On the Possible Forms of Not Vital's Sculptures |
Not Vital, Exhibition: Not Why, November 14, 2009-January 16, 2010 at Galerie Urs Meile, Beijing, exhibition view.
Not Vital, House to Watch the Sunset, 2009, stainless steel, 102 x 130 x 165 cm.
Not Vital, Model for a Bus Station in Ouagadougou, West Africa, 2009, painted stainless steel, edition of 5, 100 x 220 x 165 cm.
Not Vital, Beijing Duck in Gold, 2009, gold, 31 x 13.5 x 12 cm.
Not Vital, Unpleasant Object, 2008, stainless steel, edition of 3, 315 x 145 x 143 cm.
Not Vital, Museum for 1 Picabia, 2009, plaster, plastic, 230 x 100 x 70 cm. |
Galerie Urs Meile By CHRISTOPH DOSWALD Der Schweizer Künstler Not Vital (*1948) führt quasi eine nomadische Existenz zwischen seinen Wohnsitzen in Agadez (Niger), NotOna (Patagonia/Chile) 1), New York (USA) und dem Engadiner Dorf Sent, aus dem er ursprünglich stammt. Seit zwei Jahren besitzt Vital nun auch ein Atelier in Peking — "seit mehr als 10 Jahren erstmals wieder ein Bildhauer-Atelier", wie er sagt. Die teilweise sehr grossformatigen Werke, die dort entstanden sind, werden nun in der umfangreichen Ausstellung "NOT WHY" in der Pekinger Galerie Urs Meile gezeigt. Die Auseinandersetzung mit den räumlichen, wirtschaftlichen und kulturellen Kontexten seiner jeweiligen Wohn- und Arbeitsorte steht im Zentrum von Not Vitals Werk, das sich seit den frühen 1970er Jahren entwickelt und bereits damals eine wegweisende Balance von regionalen und internationalen Fragestellungen formuliert hat. Fragen übergeordneter gesellschaftlicher, kultureller und landschaftlicher Mythologisierung, stehen im Fokus des meist skulpturalen Werkes. Analog zu der Attraktion, die damals New York für Künstler verströmte und die Vital nach SoHo lockte, ist er von der aktuellen "chinesischen Passion für die Kunst fasziniert" (Vital). Spannende Produktionsmöglichkeiten, gute Räume, das vibrierende Künstlermilieu und der spannungsgeladene gesellschaftliche Melting Pot haben den Bündner begeistert. Die neue Umgebung bildet sich deutlich in den Werken ab, die wie immer bei Not Vital von konzeptioneller Stringenz, von feiner Ironie und von grosser Kenntnis der lokalen Kulturen und Erzähltraditionen gleichermassen zeugen. "Beijing Duck in Gold" nennt sich eine Skulptur, die formal der berühmten Delikatesse nachgebildet ist, aber mit einer goldenen Oberfläche daherkommt und damit auf die wirtschaftlichen Verwerfungen des chinesischen Turbokapitalismus verweist. Zusätzlich hat Vital eine radikalere Form der Skulptur geplant: Wäre ein Käufer bereit, den Materialwert in Höhe von momentan 1.5 Millionen US-Dollar zu bezahlen, würde die Ente aus massivem Gold hergestellt werden. Ökologische Themen erörtert "Mongolian Cow Dung", eine Bronzeskulptur, die dem nicht nur in ländlichen Gegenden noch immer sehr verbreiteten Brennstoffs nachgebildet wurde. Und wenn Not Vital die Warze von Mao Zedong aus Kohle schnitzen lässt (Titel: "mao ZHI dong"), und sie zur überdimensionalen Skulptur transformiert, dann verweist er damit darauf, dass der lange Schatten des Grossen Führers in China immer noch durchaus präsent ist, was sich im Personenkult zeigt, die er mit der phonetisch-humorvollen Doppeldeutigkeit von "Zhi" (? , chin.: "Warze") und "Ze" (?, wie in Mao Zedong) zumindest auf künstlerischer Ebene illustriert. Doch Vital versteht seine skulpturale Tätigkeit nicht nur als gesellschaftsreflexives Tun, sondern ebenso als Handlungsanweisung für die unmittelbare Wirklichkeit. Seine Lehmbauten in Niger, Westafrika, insbesondere seine Volksschule in Agadez, die er quasi als "Menschenskulptur" entwickelt hatte, zeugen von dieser ausgeprägten künstlerischen Verantwortung für gesellschaftliche Fragestellungen. Mitten in der Stadt hat der Künstler eine Pyramide aus Lehm errichtet, worauf sich die Schüler setzen können, so dass sich das Kunstwerk zum Openair-Schulhaus wandelt. Vitals Skulpturen lavieren häufig an der Grenze zur Architektur und stehen gewissermassen der klassischen Vitruvschen Vorstellung des Bauens als wichtigster Kunstform nahe. In der Pekinger Ausstellung sind Modelle für weitere Bauten zu sehen, wobei anzumerken ist, dass sich Not Vital reichlich wenig um die Funktionshierarchien zwischen Modell und gebauter Wirklichkeit schert. In Niger hat er für seine umfangreichen Bauten komplett ohne Entwurfskonzept gearbeitet. Der ockerfarbene Beobachtungsturm in der Oase Aladab wurde beispielsweise ohne Pläne und Modelle errichtet. In Peking hingegen wird "House to Watch the Sunset", eine aus Stahl gefertigte Miniaturversion dieses Lehmturms präsentiert - ein Spiel mit der Möglichkeitsform und dem verschobenen Kontext, das Vital gerne praktiziert, scheint es doch einigermassen paradox, im smoggeplagten Peking dieses archaische Observatorium errichten zu wollen. Welche spielerisch-prekäre Bedeutung Vital dem Bauen trotz aller seiner physischer Verbindlicheit zumisst, zeigt sich an einer Skulptur mit dem Titel "Museum For 1 Picabia". Das Skulptur-Modell spielt mit der Vorstellung, dass man ein Museum um ein einziges Kunstwerk herum errichten könnte, dessen Erstellungskosten genauso hoch wären, wie der Wert des darin präsentierten Werkes. Analog zu seinen Bauten in Niger wird auch hier wieder die Frage der Grenzverletzung zwischen Architektur und Kunst erörtert, bzw. darüber spekuliert, welchen Wert die Gesellschaft der Kunst beimisst. Einem Reality – Check unterzieht Vital diesen Fragenkomplex mit einer anderen Projekt-Skulptur, mit dem "Model for a Station in Ouagadougou, West Africa", das als Entwurf für eine Busstation gedacht ist. Geht es beim Picabia-Museum noch um die spielerische Balancierung von materiellen und immateriellen Werten, so kommt bei diesem Modell für eine Busstation eine existenzielle Dimension zum Ausdruck. Skulptur bzw. Architektur befassen sich mit Fragen der Nachhaltigkeit und Authentizität: Vital entwickelt modellhaft eine natürlich klimatisierte Busstation - eine angemessene bauliche Antwort auf das heisse Klima und die unterentwickelte Volkswirtschaft in Burkina Faso. Indem er diese afrikanische Fragestellung nach China bringe, so Vital, praktiziere er globale Kunst. Dass Kunst unmmittelbare Wirkung zu erzeugen in der Lage ist, führt uns Not Vital schliesslich einmal mehr mit einer Skulptur vor, die Gefahrenpotenzial besitzt: "Unpleasant Object" ist ein hochglanzpoliertes Werk aus Chromstahl, das formal an ein Sputnik erinnert. Aus seinem kugelförmigen Körper wächst eine baumartige Antenne nach oben, von wo spitz zulaufende Fortsätze unterschiedlicher Länge abgehen, wie man sie auf den Mauern von Gated Communities (zur Abwehr von unerwünschten Eindringlingen) finden kann. "Das Objekt ist attraktiv und gefährlich zugleich", sagt der Künstler. Und wie immer bei Vital werden auch in dieser Skulptur unterschiedliche Bedeutungsebenen amalgamiert, finden zu einer neue Form, die zwar leise an die Ursprünge erinnert, aber wegen ihrer bizzaren Schönheit unsere Wahrnehmung auf das Neue und Unbekannte lenken. Excerpt from By NOT VITAL One late October afternoon, when I couldn't think of anything better to do than to watch the sunset once again, I flip-flopped north and crossed the Kouri River, in which I hadn't seen a single drop of water in ten years. There, I met Oukoulla, who was coming from Azel, which means branch. He is a Tuareg, blue, and a blacksmith; although chafed by the sand, his watery eyes gleam dynamically, and he always carries a couple of knives with him, since he is, after all, a blacksmith. Like all of the blacksmiths in most African tribes, Oukoulla belongs to a lower class or caste, because he knows how to manipulate fire. As a blacksmith, he can allow his tongue free rein, and doesn't have to adhere to the strict, haughty rules the other Tuaregs follow. So it's always fun to talk to Oukulla - that is, if he speaks at all. Likely, he had been at a celebration of some sort in Azel, slitting the throats of a couple of sheep. After uttering a few religious words, he moves his sharp, thin knife so elegantly and gracefully that it looks as if he's drawing a bow across the neck of a violin. He is very economical about everything and sits quietly in front of you, like a blue sculpture. I have to be economical with my questions, too, even though I'd like to imbibe so much more from out of his eyes. Usually, he asks the same thing, as if he were not asking you anything at all. "Et la fatigue?" Am I still tired, even though I arrived weeks ago. "Ça va?" He looks at you; no, he doesn't look at you at all, but rather, through you, as if you were a piece of glass. His moist, intense eyes laugh and cry simultaneously. At the same time, I'm wrenched into their depths, and I don't know how to escape, as if I were high. We talked about business, the same way men do in New York, and night fell. The sun sank as fast as Usain Bolt would run a lap. Night. These sunsets in the desert are as intense as a heavenly masturbation session, in which one is, once again, the outsider. Oukoulla - "culla" means "sphere" in Romansh - wore a ring with a silver sphere. A bijou tuareg, which I don't want to describe at all. Never saw it. After a half-hour, I asked him if he'd made the ring, the perfect sphere, in particular. He said yes. And we both thought, who else. Meanwhile, there were more stars than sky above us. The starry sky was an ocean made of grains of sand, upon which we kept sailing. Oukoulla, unmoved, like a lapis lazuli stone. This sky is a waste of nature over the desert, which knows no waste itself. I asked Oukoulla if he could forge a silver sphere as big as a melon. "Pas de problème," he said, so proudly that it seemed as if his beautiful teeth would burst out of his mouth. Never did it, but no problem. That is a great friend, I thought; he thought the same thing. No room for doubt, if one wants to survive. (With us, in the west, the word "problem" shows up in the first sentence, or in the third, at the latest, when one gives someone a commission.) I have learned from my Tuareg friends to be sparing in my use of this word. By the time he had finished his reply, I had to know exactly what I wanted to put inside this sphere, in order to make a sculpture. Neither stars nor sand nor Oukoulla nor I would fit into it. His camel, Koura, lay on the ground twelve meters away, as still as his master, ignoring the sky, grinding his ungainly teeth, and perhaps thinking lustful thoughts about other camels, so I had to say, "a camel has to fit into it." "Pas de problème," said Oukoulla. "But you have to make twelve spheres out of silver, so that a whole animal, dried in the sun, will fit in."A slight smile escaped his lips. 'Comme ils sont bizarres ces blancs' — "these whites are so bizarre" — he must have thought, once again. "Jojo," he said in Tamasheq, which means the same thing in the Swiss-German dialect - "yeah, yeah," in English. No more questions were asked while the sculpture was being realized; every smith knew what was going to go into it. But if the spheres had remained empty, there would have been a thousand questions, and no valid answer. In our state of affluence, we are better prepared to deal with emptiness than a desert dweller is. The daily expeditions taken by the tribes, when they go off seeking pastureland, are not what constitute real life in the desert. Real life, as Saint-Exupéry says, is the game that is played on the side. — Translation: Allison Plath-Moseley |
Not Vital, Pelvis, 2008, stainless steel, edition of 3, 350 x 306 x 150 cm. |
Not Vital, Tongue, Galerie Urs Meile, Beijing. |
Not Vital: 'The Tongue is My Yardstick' |
Galerie Urs Meile By THOMAS KALLEIN "The tongue is my yardstick" — to quote Not Vital. Once again he has transformed a sense organ — all but unmediated — into a sculpture. In 1994 there were ears: countless black bronzes stuck into a thick, upright plaster shape, entitled Sausage and Ears. This was followed by Antlers + Eyes: white plaster antlers with plentiful dark eyes, like leaves on a tree, gazing down from the wall. And then there was the teaching that Vital took on in December 1988 in Cairo — when his Egyptian students asked what sculpture was, he referred them to their own noses. This led to the making of 171 Egyptian Noses in 1990, consisting of a tower of organs cast from individual human faces. Take almost anything by Not Vital, and you will find human organs and their sensual function. Sensuality means sensitivity, sensitivity means pain. Vital's sculptural method involves making casts of the organs and impaling them. Now, after more than twenty years preparing the ground, the "tongue" has emerged as the outstanding motif, a monument in its own right — upright and chased in stainless steel. At first, in his early gallery shows in New York, there were plaster or bronze animal cadavers, fixed to a wheel like a trophy on some sort of mountain path. Even the Pole Animal on a tree trunk (1982) was upright and 330 cm in height, like an orientation point in the Swiss Alps, where you have to be prepared for snow drifts and avalanches in winter. Similarly impaled on rods are the Sei Sorelle, six sisters, embodiments not only of the principle of totems and taboos, but also of Picasso's famous maxim, "I do not seek, I find!" Vital finds sensuality, but not only for himself — it is for us, too. His tower-like sculpture Gramophone is a homage to our sense of hearing. His immensely elegant sequence of marble hearing aids, His Master's Voice (1992), was dedicated to the deaf Ludwig van Beethoven. However, with this new Tongue for Beijing, the time of the trophies, shocks and memento mori seems somewhat to have passed. Vital's sights are no longer set on papillae, the little nodules that alert our brains. This Tongue of Vital's — not only a taste organ, for it also touches and sucks and registers the temperature of foods, before passing them on to the digestive system, now (more than ever before) — stands before us in even greater sublime splendour. Gleaming, it points to yet another function — human speech. And in the People's Republic of China, it may well also relate to the fact that medical students, training to become tongue diagnosticians, are said to have to scrutinise between 15 and 20 thousand tongues during training. |
The story of Tongue began in 1985 when Vital bought a calf's tongue in a butcher's shop in Lucca. He then took it to Pietrasanta, made a plaster mould and had it cast in bronze. The ensuing, first bronze Tongue was 39 centimetres tall and perhaps Vital's most impossible work of art. We need only recall reports of the horror that met Auguste Rodin's Age of Bronze — a cast made, after much consideration, directly from the fine figure of the soldier Auguste Neyt with elegiacally raised arms, only to be initially rejected by the jury of the 1878 Salon in Paris. Because it was a cast! The extent of the jury's mistake is clear when one views their decision in light of Rodin's search for physical immediacy, for direct feeling, and his battle against historical traditions, in particular the canonisation of the art of Classical Antiquity. It fell to Rodin to pave the way for the twentieth century, a century that was to know direct pain. The good citizens and art connoisseurs of Switzerland have been able to see Not Vital's work, including his Tongues, for some time now. I have heard some of their comments: "I don't know whether it's good or bad." And they were not especially amused by Vital's hypertrophied Testicles of Michelangelo's David (now measuring 138 x 120 x 97 cm) hanging on the wall in Kunsthalle Basel. So can a Tongue be a work of art? "If I say so," might be Vital's answer, but he held his tongue. He enlarged his 1985 Tongue, and ten years later — by now 200 cm in height — it was shown on a sculptor's stool in the Sperone Westwater Gallery. On that occasion in New York, you could have walked into a virtual huntsman's room and responded to the sight of body parts of dead animals with a grim, grinning dance. But what Americans would feel like dancing at the sight of animal entrails? 1996 saw the making of Vital's Tongue in Carrara marble; this version is now in Kunsthalle Bielefeld. At the time, Germany had its own Rodin moment with the sculptor Not Vital. "Of all the pieces you've bought, I have my doubts about this one," was the reaction of one of my most valued colleagues. Admittedly, as yet there are no comparisons to be made with Vital's work, no style and no library — as in the imagination of Jorge Luis Borges — where you could read clever things on the subject of tongues and, very important in art history, find a foothold. Although in 1951 Albert Einstein did allow himself to be photographed with his tongue out because the paparazzi were getting on his nerves. He took the newspaper picture (having cut out his companions) and sent it to his friends as a portrait of himself. And in 1973, the artist Peter Weibel — to name a contemporary of Not Vital — had his tongue cemented into position for an hour as part of the Action Raum der Sprache. But while the tongue is still as much of a sculptural taboo as ever, Vital simply takes this as his cue to enlarge the work. In 1995, he installed a bronze Tongue, 360 cm in height, outside his parents' home in the Engadine. Once again he held his peace, and just showed the work with a smile. Now at 768 cm, the work has been chased in stainless steel for Beijing. It rises up like a monument to the twenty-first century. "The tongue is my yardstick," says the artist, perhaps suggesting to us — as the beholders of this work of art — that if sculpture today wants to break its own boundaries, it can celebrate an organ that uniquely links our cognitive capacities, our sensuality, our sex drive and our consumption of food and drink. What else is there? We are connected — by our tongues — with all other human beings and with all mammals. Archaic is the new modern. And, wherever possible, Not Vital adds pleasure to pain. — Translation from German by Fiona Elliot |
Not Vital, Tongue, 2008, Stainless steel, edition of 7, 37 x 8.5 x 9 cm. |
