The Swiss Artist with the Very Cool Name: Not Vital in Venice - House to Watch the Sunset and snow & water & ice

House to Watch the Sunset by Not Vital (2021) - Photo: Cat Bauer

(Venice, Italy) House to Watch the Sunset by Not Vital, the Swiss artist with the very cool name, shimmers inside the 16th-century Benedictine Church of San Giorgio Maggiore designed by Andrea Palladio. The majestic contemporary aluminum tower was constructed by Italian craftspeople and is the fifth iteration of Vital's ambitious global project, which is to produce a House to Watch the Sunset on every continent on the planet, each structure built with different local materials, but each with the same very specific mathematical form and dimensions -- which are:

tower 13 X 3.40 X 3.40 m

3 outside stairs

1 with 13

1 with 26

1 with 39 steps

each 1 is 25 X 25 cm +

45 degrees

the 1st floor has 1 door

the 2nd 1 door + 1 window

the 3rd 1 door + 2 windows

the 4th 1 door + 3 windows

4 rooms 3 X 3 X 3 m

+ 1 bed + 1 table + 1 chair

no water or electricity

just enough

to make the sun set

Vital was born on February 15, 1948 in Sent, a village in the Engadin Valley in the Swiss Alps, and has lead a nomadic life, living also in the U.S., Niger, Italy, Brazil and China while maintaining his Swiss base. He is a sculptor and a painter and practices the art of SCARCH -- an acronym for sculpture-architecture -- which is also the name of the exhibition and includes seven other works displayed inside the sacristy and abbey. 

 

Tintoretto 2020, 2 silver boxes, 27 X 29 X 29 cm by Not Vital 

Photo: Nally Bellati of Contessanally

 

Four of the works are silver "portraits" in the form of two silver boxes made by silver smiths in Agadez, Niger, "the result of a strict mathematical model that converts a date of birth into abstract form."  The silver box portraits are of Andrea Palladio, who designed the Church of San Giorgio Maggiore, Tintoretto, whose paintings adorn the church, Pope Pius VII, who was elected Pope in the Benedictine monastery of San Giorgio (in Venice, not Rome!) and crowned in the Church of San Giorgio Maggiore on March 21, 1800. The fourth 2 silver boxes portrait is of Pope Francis.

 

SCARCH is a collateral event of the Biennale International Architecture Exhibition, and runs through November 21, 2021.

Not Vital, 700 Snowballs, 2001, installation view

 

Vital had previously had an exhibition with a mathematical theme at the Abbazia of San Giorgio Maggiore in 2013 entitled 700 Snowballs, curated by Alma Zevi, which consisted of 700 glass balls individually blown by the Vetreria Pino Signoretto glass makers on the island of Murano.

 

Val Sinestra (2019) by Not Vital at ALMA ZEVI Venice - Photo: Cat Bauer

 

Now, ALMA ZEVI presents snow & water & ice, Not Vital's first solo exhibition at her Venice gallery. Part of the exhibition is Val Sinestra (2019), an installation that originally consisted of 80 transparent glass bottles blown by Finnish glass makers and was exhibited in 2018. Val Sinesta refers to a location in the mineral-rich springs of the Grisons region in Switzerland, famous for their healing  properties. Vital put water from the Val Sinesta springs into the glass bottles. During the exhibition, over time, the mineral-rich sediment split from the water and sank to the bottom of each vessel.

 

For the Venice exhibit, Vital has recreated the Finnish exhibit. However, instead of 80 bottles, there are 42, and he has substituted the water from the Grisons region with the water from the Venice lagoon to see if any changes in the water take place during the exhibition. 

Since Not Vidal is so keen on numbers and plotting exhibitions with mathematical equations, I was curious as to why there were 42 bottles in the Venice exhibit. It is a very specific number. I asked Alma Zevi's assistant. She said, "I don't think there is a particular reason." I said, "That makes no sense. Forty-two is a weird number." She paused. "He does seem to have a thing for numbers."

I then asked Alma Zevi. She paused, and then confirmed that there was no particular reason, which I again found difficult to believe. I wondered: Had the people surrounding Not Vital become so jaded that the monumental significance of the numbers lurking beneath the surface, hidden in plain sight, was commonplace to them?

Not Vital in Venice, August 27, 2021 - Photo: Cat Bauer

Then Not Vital himself arrived and bounded into Alma Zevi's gallery, which is a small space -- certainly nothing like the soaring ceilings of the Church of San Giorgio Maggiore. He was sort of like an electrical storm in human form. I lifted my iPad to take his photo, and he charged into a closeup. 

 

I asked him why there were 42 bottles. I expected to hear something like a Divine Mathematical Equation written on tablets from the heavens. He paused, then motioned to another fellow outside the gallery: "Ask him."

I went out the door and up to the guy, who turned out to be a clever fellow named Eric, an expat from Pennsylvania by way of Beijing, who was Not Vidal's assistant. I said, "Not Vital told me to ask you why there are 42 bottles in this exhibition." I waited to hear the Answer to Life.

"Because that is how many bottles could fit in the car," said Eric. "We drove to Venice from Switzerland."

 

snow & water & ice is at the Alma Zevi Venice Gallery at Salizzada Malipeiro until November 6, 2021.  

Ciao from Venezia,

Cat Bauer

Venetian Cat - The Venice Blog