Tongue 37

The internationally known Swiss artist Not Vital lives and works in his birthplace of Sent in the
Swiss Alps and since 1974, also variously in the USA, Niger, Italy and China. His multi-layered
work is distinguished by his use of highly diverse techniques and materials. Vital works with
silver, gold, bronze, steel and aluminium as well as glass, marble and wood. In his extensive
travels, and with an almost anthropological curiosity, he harvests new techniques, forms, and
methods of working from a variety of different cultures, which he then employs during the
different phases of his work. Thus his conceptual sculptures and installations are inspired by
the art of glass-blowing in Murano, for example, or by the goldsmithing art of the Tuaregs. His
monumental sculpture “Tongue” almost seems to be a metaphor for his absorbing philosophy
of life. The tongue, the organ with which the child first explores the world, is at the same time
the tool for language and communication. In Bad Homburg, the over five metre-high “Tongue”
in shining stainless steel stands like a memorial next to the Kaiser-Wilhelms-Bad, its abstracted
organic form creating a compelling tension with the inorganic material.