Swiss artist Not Vital demonstrates his versatility anew in eight new works at Caratsch de Pury & Luxembourg. Seven Hundred and Fifty Knives (all works 2004)—an assemblage of blades that jut out of a wall in an arrangement that suggests a mountain landscape—makes you look uneasily over your shoulder the same way Marina Abramovic’s butcher-knife ladder once did. In one corner of the large gallery a shattered plaster bust (or gipskopf—the German word also means “numbskull”) is resplendent, surrounded by traces of artfully splattered snowballs. Titled Throwing Snowballs at Self-Portrait of an Idiot, it isn’t lacking in self-parody. Model for a House in Africa is a tall conical hut made from wood, netting, plaster, and sugar. The artist, born in 1948, works with marble, plastic, or bones, as well as with steel and plaster. Or, better yet, he makes his materials work for him. For some time Vital has been travelling between New York, the Swiss village of Sent, and Agadez, in Nigeria, and he achieves his sculptures with the help of African craftsmen and fabricators. He has also built houses, workshops, and a school in Nigeria. He is increasingly moving towards intercontinental social projects—a welcome and expansive turn in a practice that continues to produce astute, compelling, and sometimes shocking work.
Translated from German by Emily Speers Mears.
