Not Vital gave a gift of the first of three pepper-tree branches made of stainless steel to Ai WeiWei, his neighbour in the Caochangdi district of Beijing. The second branch is leaning, apparently casually, against a roof edge at the entrance to his sculpture park in Sent. In the inner courtyard of Kloster Schoenthal the artist has placed one of what he calls his “Leading the Way” sculptures. It is like a resting giant’s walking stick and has been part of the Schoenthal collection since 2014. The budding branch is indicative of nature in its most encouraging stage. In Schönthal (Bellaval in the Romansch language) the polished steel is the first thing to catch the sun in the morning and point – while marking the place self-confidently – towards the sky. As you approach it, the object dissolves in the mirroring-effect of its surface and in so doing sucks in the world in miniature.

The sculpture is present but not quite tangible, connected with its surroundings, yet hovering. In character, it resembles the artist himself, who paces out the world’s coordinates between his parental home in Sent, where he was born in 1948, Beijing, Agadez in Niger and Rio de Janeiro. “Leading the Way” represents the beginning of artist Not Vital’s friendship with the beautiful valley in the Jura Mountains. We would now like to invite you to the 2015 summer exhibition which brings together his most important work groups: trail-blazing creations in every sense.