A contemporary sculpture park transforms Switzerland’s Verbier ski resort thanks to Madeleine Paternot, co-founder

3-D Sculpture Park
Verbier, Switzerland

IF THERE WAS AN AWARD FOR MUSEUMS WITH A VIEW, THIS ONE WOULD TAKE THE TOP SPOT EVERY TIME. THE VERBIER 3D SCULPTURE PARK IS AN OPEN AIR MUSEUM WHOSE EXHIBITS – PIECES OF MODERN ART CREATED DURING THE COURSE OF AN ARTISTS’ RESIDENCY – ARE SCATTERED ABOUT THE MOUNTAINS AT 2,300M ALTITUDE ABOVE THE ALPINE RESORT OF VERBIER. YOU CAN VISIT THEM ON THE COURSE OF A STROLL BETWEEN THE LA CHAUX AND RUINETTES CHAIR LIFTS, EVEN IN WINTER WHEN THE AREA IS FULL OF SKIERS. IF YOU WANT SOMEONE TO EXPLAIN THE SOMETIMES OBSCURE INSTALLATIONS AND SCULPTURES, FREE GUIDED TOURS ARE AVAILABLE.

TIMEOUT January 2015

https://www.timeout.com/switzerland/art/verbier-3d-sculpture-park

Education, Culture, Environmentalism
Olaf Breuning at the
3-D Sculpture Park

The 3-D Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to creating contemporary art to promote environmentalism, education, and culture to local and international audiences. Founded in 2010 by New York-based artist Madeleine Paternot and Verbier-based artist Kiki Thompson, the foundation created an educational and cultural Artist Residency and Sculpture Park inspired by the stunning Alpine environment of Verbier, Switzerland at an altitude of 2,300 meters between La Chaux and Ruinettes. More than one million visitors to Verbier can access the park for free year round.

In 2016, the Verbier 3-D Foundation launched a 5-year initiative uniting artists, locals and scientists to chronicle the impact of the surrounding glacial environment. Their insights are captured in photography, sculpture and multi-media residencies, alongside research, exhibitions and education programs for audiences of all ages.

Utilizing the lens of art, the Verbier 3-D Foundation aims to create a dialogue around the themes of glacial warming and societal behaviors on a local that extends outwards. The exhibitions will feature new work by visual artists who, in their individual approaches, are interested in these conversations.

 

Education, Culture, Environmentalism at
the 3-D Sculpture Park

 

IN TODAY’S LRFA BLOG POST, WE JOIN MADELEINE PATERNOT ON HER FORMATION OF THE VERBIER 3-D FOUNDATION, A CONTEMPORARY OUTDOOR MUSEUM WITH A FOCUS ON GLACIAL WARMING AND ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERNS AND A PLATFORM FOR CREATIVITY AND THE SUPPORT OF CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD.

MADDY, WHAT INSPIRED YOU AND HOW DOES IT WORK?

We invite artists from all over the globe to Verbier and challenge them to use the mountainous environment of the Alps as inspiration. The residency challenges the artist to be out of their comfort zone due to the reclusiveness and limitation of the alpine environment.  It’s fascinating to watch how this impacts their work.  For the past four years, our curators Paul Goodwin and Alexa Kusber have focused on climate change as its effect is pronounced by our rapidly disappearing glaciers in Switzerland.       

Additionally, we create events for our artists-in-residence to interact with the local community in Verbier to encourage dialogue around their work and our premise which is focused on the environment. Our educational programs for children and adults are equally important and apart of our platform.

http://www.3-dfoundation.com/

Chloe Dewe Mathews
In Search of Frankenstein
Artist Resident, Verbier

Shot in the alpine landscape that inspired Mary Shelley’s classic novel, Chloe Dewe Mathews’ photographic series ‘In Search of Frankenstein’ juxtaposes snow-covered mountains with a network of eerie subterranean bunkers, built in the 1960s to shelter the entire population of Switzerland in the event of a nuclear disaster. 

The project was conceived during a residency at the Verbier 3-D Foundation in 2016, when the artist discovered that Shelley’s manuscript was started during an unusual holiday on the shores of Lake Geneva. The ominously wet weather conditions of 1816 – the ‘Year without Summer’ – forced Shelley and her companions to stay indoors day after day, dreaming up ghost stories, from which Frankenstein’s monster emerged. 

Dewe Mathews photographed the region that had inspired the eighteen-year-old author, exploring miles of underground corridors and vast melting glaciers that seemed to offer parallels between Shelley’s prophetic socio-environmental concerns and the anxieties of our time. ‘In Search of Frankenstein’ presents a contemporary sublime, which affords this monumental piece of literature fresh resonance, two hundred years after it was first published.

We have initiated similar programming at PRVT VW.  This fall we will host our first Time + Space residency with our past Verbier 3-D artist-in-residence, Chloe Dewe Mathews in New York at PRVT VW. This is a new collaboration between Verbier 3-D and PRVT VW.  As we are set in the heart of Soho artist district in an old school loft, the invitation only, in-house residency is geared towards providing international artists and curators “time + space” to further develop their practices in New York’s dynamic urban setting. The aim is to develop a dialogue between the diverse residency locations of New York and Verbier that challenge and expand participating artists’ practices in relation to place.  With a focus on deepening research and strengthening art world affiliations, this residency is an extension of the secluded and experimental environment that reflects the Verbier 3-D Sculpture park.  This past spring Verbier 3-D helped launch a book and exhibition at the British Library with Chloe that was created during her residency in Verbier entitled, In Search of Frankenstein.  Equally exciting, Chloe is launching an exhibition and book with Aperture during their gala this year and we will host her and produce an artist talk with Aperture during her stay. 

I’m very excited about our upcoming plans, after nearly ten years in New York City, it all seems to be coming together. 

IN OUR NEXT LRFA BLOG POST,  WE WILL EXPLORE SOME OF THE UPCOMING EVENTS AND ART PROGRAMS TAKING PLACE IN VERBIER. IF YOU TIME IT RIGHT, MADDY HERSELF WILL BE THERE TO ANSWER QUESTIONS AND SHARE THE PARK WITH YOU.

STAY TUNED!

The LRFA blog welcomes Ron Warren, director and partner at the Mary Boone Gallery,

Ron Warren
Partner and Director
Mary Boone Gallery

MARY BOONE GALLERY WAS FOUNDED OVER 40 YEARS AGO, IN 1977, IN A SMALL GROUND FLOOR SPACE IN SOHO. ALTHOUGH MODEST IN SIZE, 420 WEST BROADWAY WAS A BUILDING THAT HOUSES THE LEGENDARY LEO CASTELLI AND ILEANA SONNABEND GALLERIES. ALTHOUGH MODEST AT THE START, MARY BOONE HAS ALWAYS HAD A VISIONARY INSTINCT FOR THE RIGHT LOCATIONS AND THE RIGHT ARTISTS. THE GALLERY HAS ALWAYS BEEN COMMITTED TO SHOWING THE WORK OF INNOVATIVE YOUNG ARTISTS AND, AS THEIR CAREERS PROGRESSED, MORE ESTABLISHED ARTISTS AS WELL.

420 West Broadway
SoHo

TODAY, THE LRFA BLOG IS HONORED TO INTERVIEW RON WARREN, A DIRECTOR AND PARTNER AT MARY BOONE GALLERY.

RON, THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR CONTRIBUTING TO THE BLOG.

Ellsworth Kelly
Red Yellow Blue V, 1968
Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden

HOW DID YOU BECOME INTERESTED IN ART? WHAT WAS YOUR EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND THAT LED YOU INTO THIS FIELD?

My family was more about science, music, and books, so I wonder myself what brought me to art. I went to a small private, and very conservative, liberal arts college in the Mid-West and, like most people I know who ended up in the art business, took some studio classes along with art history. I did have one art history professor that I liked very much, a French former nun, very reserved and proper yet passionate about her subject, who organized trips to far-flung museums. On one of these trips I remember standing at the Hirshhorn before an Ellsworth Kelly – a series of monochrome panels – and feeling that this was something very exciting, even though classmates whose opinions I respected dismissed the work.

Leo Castelli Gallery
Jasper Johns exhibition

November of Senior year, my roommate bet that I had enough credits to graduate in December. We sat down and calculated… and he was right. So I made a fast plan to enter the “real” world. I was doing an Independent Study with the Ohio Historical Society, and my supervisor was a photographer who kept a loft in New York, in SoHo. She suggested I go to New York and sublet her place. I arrived in January 1980, which seemed very auspicious – new year, new decade. This was a time when SoHo, and the city, was on the brink of enormous change. And with the new galleries right in my neighborhood, for the first time I began to look at contemporary art.

Brice Marden
Work on paper

WHEN DID YOU START AT MARY BOONE AND HOW DID YOU EVOLVE INTO A DIRECTOR AND PARTNER OF  THE GALLERY?

I started in 1985. The Gallery had recently taken on representation of Brice Marden, so there had been an influx of twenty-plus years of slides and black and white photos into the archive, and all the while new works were being inventoried, photographed, and added. I kept everything organized. In those days every label had to be hand-typed. We were continually sending out photographs to collectors and for press, and continually asking to get them back – inconceivable now. Over time one comes to know an artist and their work very well and becomes dedicated to them and the gallery.

Brice Marden
Oil on canvas

IN OUR NEXT LRFA BLOG POST, RON WILL INFORM US OF THE IMPRESSIVE ARCH OF HISTORY AND GROWTH OF THE GALLERY. BY TRACKING THE ARTISTS REPRESENTED BY MARY BOONE, WE HAVE A BIRD’S EYE VIEW OF THE ART WORLD AT THE TIME.

PLEASE JOIN US!

SOUND & IMAGE, an exhibition of current members of the Federation at Westbeth Gallery, February 3-24th.

 

The Federation of Modern Painters and Sculptors presents Sound and Image,

an exhibition at the Westbeth Gallery on the theme of image and music.

In his On the Spiritual in Art, Kandinsky wrote: “Colour is the keyboard. The eye is the hammer. The soul is the piano with its many strings.”

Ever since Kandinsky likened paint to music, modernists have been thinking hard about the influential ways that visual art and music come together.

This exhibition explores the sounds of paint, ink and other media through the works of a group that has been an ensemble for 78 years and whose artists have been and still are fascinated by the coming together of two art forms. Founding member Mark Rothko’s son Christopher writes about his father: “Music was central to my father’s world—to his own aesthetic sensibilities, certainly, but also to the structure and expressive modes he found as a painter. I think it’s fair to say he was a painter who aspired to be a musician.”

Nicholas Christopher
House of the Rising Sun

This February 3-24, 2018, the Federation will be presenting ‘Sound & Image’ at the Westbeth Gallery, New York City.  29 Members will exhibit their work melding their art with the music that inspired them.  Throughout the gallery there will be interactive displays in which the viewer can immerse oneself in the visual presentation along with music playing on their mobile phone through the use of a QR scanner.

TO CARRY ON HIS FATHER’S TRADITION TO WORK IN A CREATIVE FIELD, ANDREW BOLOTOWSKY, ILYA’S SON, HAS PURSUED A MUSICAL CAREER.

Sunday, Feb. 11^th will bring Sound & Image to life with a flute performance by Andrew Bolotowsky, world renown flutist and son of Ilya, another Federation founder.  Andrew will give a brief talk about his father and then perform to the inspiration of the exhibition.  Other musicians will also perform between 4 pm – 6 pm that evening.

THE LRFA BLOG IS PLEASED TO FEATURE THREE OF THE CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS WHO WILL BE IN THE EXHIBIT BUT TO EXPERIENCE THE FULL IMPACT OF THE FEDERATION’S PRESENT ROSTER OF ARTISTS AND THEIR CREATIVITY, VISIT THE EXHIBITION AT WESTBETH GALLERY ON WEST STREET IN MANHATTAN.

Anneli Arms
Music Muse

ANNELI ARMS

Known internationally for sculpture and etching, it is her sculpture that sets her apart. By working with oversized creatures – human, marine and insect – she remarks distinctly on evolution, forcing the viewer to consider the beginning of future of humanity and his fears of both.  In time, the artist’s early paintings and relief works morphed into sculpture and gave birth to her “Human Creatures” and “Creature Creatures”.  None of the creatures, human or otherwise, are meant to be completely realistic. Instead, these parallel universes are individual and generic, seemingly modern and ancient at the same time.

http://www.anneliarms.com

Anneli Arms
Architect of His Dreams

JON SERVETAS

Jon Servetas
Oil on canvas

Jon Servetas started drawing as a child during WWll using poster paints and grocery bags from the market.
His work has evolved over the last 70+ years with the use of a warm color palette encapsulating everyday scenes.
His images are traditional in nature but are more of an impression of the scene with color taking over than true realism.

Jon Servetas

NICHOLAS CHRISTOPHER

My fascination has always been in taking the tool of the Impressionists and early compositional photographers and moving the photograph into the realm of ‘true art’. Working only outdoors with available light I capture the visual juxtaposition of the shadows that play within a compositional ‘color’ palette. Dimensionality or lack thereof is a product of this interplay. Dimension and shadow increase during the assembly process taking my 2 dimensional compositions and adding depth. Now light & shadow play a new role in creating a 3 dimensional finished work. The assembly rests on a wall, which is now also part of the paradigm.

www.nccworks.com

Nicholas Christopher
Mondrian Memory
mixed media

THE LRFA BLOG IS VERY PLEASED TO WELCOME GERI THOMAS IN OUR NEXT POST, THE FOUNDER AND PRINCIPAL OF A FIRM SPECIALIZING IN RECRUITING AND PLACEMENT OF POSITIONS IN THE ARTS. GERI WILL SPEAK OF HER NEW CONSULTING AND TEACHING VENTURES AS WELL AS ISSUES OF DIVERSITY, EQUAL PAY AND DISCRIMINATION IN THE ARTS’ PROFESSIONS.

STAY TUNED!