Not Vital: Exhibition Catalogue

This publication was created for the first major UK exhibition and largest museum project to date by the extraordinary and enigmatic Swiss artist, Not Vital at Yorkshire Sculpture Park. New sculptures, paintings and works on paper are brought together with a selection from the last 30 years of Vital’s career. 

Using a pared-back palette of white, grey and black, inspired by his native Engadin valley, the artist explores materials such as marble, coal, plaster, glass, silver, gold and steel, producing many works in collaboration with skilled artisans around the world. Though elegant and spare, Vital’s works are deeply poetic, reflecting his intense and unrelenting sense of adventure, wonder and passion for the world around him.
Alongside extensive exhibition photography are essays on the exhibition and its wider context by Clare Lilley, and on the relationship between sculpture and architecture in Vital’s work by Alma Zevi. Further contributions by Richard Long and Gore Vidal, and an excerpt from a conversation between the artist and Hans Ulrich Obrist, extend an understanding of this artist’s unique nomadic practice.