22. Juli – 14. September 2019, Galerie Andrea Caratsch, St. Moritz.

Since 2007, the Engadine-born artist Not Vital spends several months a year living and working in Beijing where most of his sculptures are created and fabricated. For this year’s summer exhibition, Galerie Andrea Caratsch shows an important installation created by the artist in his first year spent in China.

“Let One Hundred Flowers Bloom” consists of one hundred stainless steel sculptures of closed lotus buds, hand-weld and crafted in a workshop in the outskirts of Beijing. In the gallery, the monumental-sized flowers lie stem by stem, in staggered rows, filling the entire exhibition space. The lotus flower, simultaneously metaphor for Chinese culture and eternal hope, has meanwhile become part of Not Vital’s iconographic repertoire. Yet, in the present installation, the number and size of the flowers heighten their sculptural quality and symbolic meaning exceptionally, intriguing and overwhelming at the same time. The current installation may be considered as exemplary for the understanding of Not Vital’s artistic practice and his unique capacity of creating the sublime.