This winter the resort village of Gstaad, Switzerland, becomes an unlikely spot on the art world map, thanks to Neville Wakefield and Olympia Scarry’s newest curatorial project.
Wakefield, who has curated for MOMA PS1, Frieze Projects, Nike, and Playboy, among others, and Scarry, a successful artist focused on sculpture, have not collaborated on such an undertaking before. Taking a cue from sprawling, scavenger hunt–style expositions like Documenta in Kassel, Germany, or the Contour Biennial in Mechelen, Belgium, Elevation 1049, named for Gstaad’s height in meters above sea level, will see the installation of commissioned works by 22 Swiss artists—in garages, on frozen lakes, and in cable cars trundling up to the village’s adjacent glacier. (The project’s emphasis on cold and its material properties also recalls the 2004 “Snow Show,” curated by Lance Fung in Lapland.) “For me, Gstaad carried all the clichés and baggage of the jet set—but when you go there, it does still seem like a village,” Wakefield says. “It still smells of cow shit.”
It’s Scarry who has the most direct connection to the town: Her grandfather, beloved children’s book author Richard, lived there for years, and Olympia spent her final two years of high school in the snowy hamlet. Wakefield, who was born on the Isles of Scilly in the U.K., brings a secondary point of view to the Swiss-centric project, which is fitting, considering the odd in-between space in which he sees Gstaad operating. “It’s really a global village, both extremely local and extremely international,” he says. “As much of Switzerland exists outside the country as in it.” That’s reflected in the impressive roster of artists involved with Elevation 1049; some, like Valentin Carron and Sylvie Fleury, still reside in Switzerland, while others are based in Iceland, China, Arizona, and Paris.
Some of these artists plan to focus on unconventional locations, or on Gstaad’s unique history. Peter Fischli is restaging a 1983 work he made with the late David Weiss, sited in a village garage. “It’s an installation with an air of the hobbyist gone wrong,” Wakefield says. “You can’t tell what’s being made, what’s real, and what’s fake. There’s something that looks like a motor, but there’s also a polyurethane crocodile.” Christian Marclay’s contribution plays on Gstaad’s unlikely status as the go-to backdrop for Bollywood films and will string together clips from that pantheon. Christoph Büchel has expressed his fascination with the architecture of a trailer park located a very short distance from the village center, a ramshackle assortment of permanent dwellings that has its own view of the Gstaad Palace. Ugo Rondinone is placing colored rocks in streams; Claudia Comte is making a painting that will be installed beneath the surface of the local hockey rink.
Stills from Christian Marclay’s work-in- progress for Elevation 1049
Many of the proposed works will speak to the climate, topography, and natural conditions of Gstaad from January 27 through March 8. “The weather, which is obviously unreliable, will be the biggest challenge,” Wakefield admits, noting the tenuousness of a proposed ice-and-snow sculpture by Thomas Hirschhorn. Olaf Breuning wants to create an interactive piece that involves winter sport: “It started from a conversation about skiers and first tracks and how they’re effectively a drawing made on the slopes,” Wakefield says. “It developed into an idea that is much more democratic and participatory, where you basically produce an action painting using these pigment-laden sleds.” Scarry’s own contribution to Elevation 1049 is a sculpture that she plans to site on top of a fairly remote lake. Her piece will be a facsimile of the poles used to mark the boundaries of construction sites in Switzerland—in her rendition, the poles will be gilded by local craftsmen, and the whole structure will slowly slip into the lake as the ice on its surface melts. That’s the plan, provided winter temperatures play along.
“My original interest in the art world came through Robert Smithson and land art, the idea of non-sites,” Wakefield says.
“A lot of the pieces work with the weather, and that’s the point—they’ll melt, or decompose, or deteriorate,” adds Scarry.
“That’s what’s interesting,” Wakefield explains. “It’s art as process rather than end product. We’ve seen enough product. Putting a bit of entropy in the mix is not going to be bad.”
