Not Vital

Not Vital was born on 15 February 1948 in Sent, a village in the Lower Engadine valley of Graubunden, Switzerland. Multiple biographies describe him as dividing his time among a rotating set of homes and studios, most consistently cited as Sent, Beijing, and Rio de Janeiro, with additional periods spent in Niger and elsewhere. One source describes him as holding Swiss-American dual citizenship, though this is reported in only a single account and is not independently corroborated in the available research.

No school, degree, or year of formal art training could be confirmed for Vital in the sources reviewed for this profile. His first solo exhibition at Sperone Westwater in New York took place in 1995, and he returned to that gallery for solo shows in 1997, 1999, 2004, 2007, and 2012. His practice has long combined discrete sculptural objects, works in glass, marble, and metal, with large, inhabitable structures built directly into landscapes, among them houses conceived to frame a single view, such as the piece later installed at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark. In 2013 he installed 700 Snowballs on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore during the Venice Biennale, and in 2001 his work appeared in Plateau of Humanity, the central exhibition of the 49th Venice Biennale. He participated in the 17th International Architecture Biennale in Venice in 2021.

Vital's exhibition history, rather than a body of published criticism, is the clearest record of his standing: inclusion in the 2001 Venice Biennale's Plateau of Humanity, a 2005 survey at Kunsthalle Bielefeld, a 2011 solo show at UCCA Beijing, and what UK institutional sources describe as his first major exhibition in Britain, at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park in 2016, followed by his first institutional project in Austria, at the Museum der Moderne Salzburg in 2020 and 2021. Coverage of these shows has repeatedly framed his work around the blurring of sculpture and architecture and the way his built structures respond to specific, often remote, sites. His 2026 exhibitions with Thaddaeus Ropac in London and Almine Rech in Shanghai indicate continued gallery and curatorial interest in his practice into the present.

Not Vital is currently represented by Thaddaeus Ropac and Almine Rech, both of which mounted solo exhibitions of his work in 2026, and he is also listed with featured representation by Nara Roesler and Galerie Nordenhake. Market databases record an active auction history, MutualArt lists over 200 works by the artist that have come to auction, but the available research does not support a confirmed all-time auction record. A Phillips artist page lists a past sale as low as USD 16,510, without a lot title, date, or location attached, so this figure cannot be treated as representative of his top auction result. As of this writing, no single work, price, and sale date could be verified together as his auction high, and that field is intentionally left open pending further documentation.

There is no confirmed catalogue raisonne for Not Vital in the sources reviewed, and verification of a given work should run through the artist's current representing galleries rather than through a published scholarly catalogue. His auction footprint, while real, is thinly documented in public sources, and no single result could be confirmed as a record price, which means collectors should treat any auction figure circulating for this artist with caution until it can be tied to a specific, sourced lot. Because his career is built substantially on site-specific and often monumental works, museum exhibition history and gallery representation, rather than auction results alone, are the more reliable signals of his standing.