Hi. My name is not be Tahl. I'm not not biter.
As you can imagine, I was called in America most of the time.
I had been working as a sculptor for exactly half of my life and as a painter for 22 months.
But what I want to talk to you about is a passion that I had when I was seven or eight years old.
As you know, now that I was born in Switzerland, in the Green Valley, which is famous for its beauty.
For some who read so to make no suffering. And also this language, which is my mother language, which is romance, only spoken by 36000 people.
And actually the dialect that my dialect is only spoken by maybe 10000 people.
So growing up, there was when I went to school there, we had five months off.
We only had to go to school for seven months and we had five months off. We didn't have to go.
And what's happening here? OK.
And during those five months you had to come up to by doing something interesting because otherwise you'd die of boredom up there.
And what. What was my interest? Very early age was to build things, to build huts, to build three houses.
And I remember that later on when I read it to look alvino it, but only at Umbanda bearing on the tree.
It was actually not deja vu. It was more like deja vu.
Coop, I already went through that as a child.
The most important thing about doing those this building, this these huts, whatever it was that you did that with enormous passion,
which later on you tend to forget, because later on, if you start to build things, I mean, it's so complicated.
You have to deal with all kinds of of codes and whatever.
And I was lucky that in 1990, the late of 1990, I went to a place in Africa, in West Africa, called here in a city which is called Agadez.
Why I went there, I don't know exactly. I wanted to go to the Sahara Desert, but.
That's the place I wanted to go later on. I remember that I probably had seen one photograph of a mosque of this city.
So I it was a very long trip. I had to go through Mali, Burkina Faso, and until I arrived to the city of Agadez, I arrived there at night.
And early in the morning I got up.
And by that time, they already knew that a white man has arrived there.
So they were outside. The tourists were outside, tried to sell me, sell, sell jewellery to me.
And I told them, well, I'm not that interested in jewellery. I would like to have some some land or some some place that I could build something.
And they said no problem. It's always a problem in Africa because they know what the problem is.
And so they sold me this land, which was a little bit outside of the city, in Agadez, in the pools section of town.
And by the way, Niger is the poorest country in the world.
And so by by 8:00 or 9:00 o'clock, the deal was already made about the land.
And by 11:00, the first workers came and we started building.
This is how fast goes and what during that time, I did a small drawing how I would like this house to look look like I only had like two hours.
But like, they looked at it, they did not understand because they don't be.
They don't. And they didn't understand my drawing. So it just traced the house where the house should be.
I just traced it in the sand. And this is the first house I built.
It's called Make Out for Me, which is the house of horrors, as you can see there.
So many horns because the slaughtering house is in the middle of town and the whole animal is used.
But the horns several what to do with the horns. So they burned them. And so it smells terrible.
So I have like this 14 year old kid who goes every day and collects the horns and they're all around the house, as you can see, has three stories.
And. And on the second floor is my room.
It has it has four doors on each direction.
I didn't know at the time that when the house. When the House is finished that the workers would leave.
It's not like here that when the house is done, the workers leave, of course.
They are. They don't. Because, like, there is always something to do on the house.
It's like a newborn that needs care. And so they are always there, always their account of the workers.
And they were 55 and kids are there.
So, like, I had to come up with new ideas. It's interesting.
It's so interesting that in a country like like newsier, the Tuaregs say that what is fast is good,
even though this they drink tea for six hours a day, but they sick everything, which is fast is good.
So I don't have to describe you how the school looked like.
It was like I had never seen anything like it. So I decided to make a school which was so great because I never had would have had the opportunity to
make a school in Western Europe or America or so because there were so many children I wanted to make.
I made a pyramid and it was it was planned.
Four hundred and fifty children, unfortunately, because it's on a hill.
It attracts too many people, too many children.
And by two years ago and also last time I was there two months ago, they are now four times as many children.
So the whole school is full of children. You don't see the schoolhouse anymore.
People kids don't go to school. They go onto the school.
And so this is kind of like a moving sculpture, which sayings and praise and and it's it's really fascinating.
It's actually so strong that when I go there, I have, like, almost tears in my eyes because it's extremely, extremely strong environment.
And inside, you can see inside. That's where they live during the rainy season.
And. Then I moved north of the city.
I got like a wasis. And I built this one, this house against sandstorms and and heat.
It's tremendously hot there. And. And this is the house that was done.
This is the house to watch the moon to watch the the stars.
And that was just now in New York last week.
And I was showing this to someone and saying, like, every day when I'm there, I watch the stars who like three hours.
And you can imagine from someone in New York say, like, you're going crazy.
I think, you know, like, how can you spend three hours to look at the sky and even be at the house for it?
The next one was this. This is a house to watch the sunset. If you have ever been to Africa, one of the most fascinating things are sunsets.
It's actually go so fast. It's so intense.
And since this is an oasis, I wanted to have a higher elevation where I could look at this frontally for this very, very short time every night.
And the tallest is the tallest stairs leading to the west.
That's where I sit. That also became my house afterwards.
It's very small. It's only three by three by three metres. It has no running water, has no electricity.
But it's one of the most that one of the houses I like the most.
Now, the thing is that why upon its completion, it was something that you cannot.
This building is kind of like. Complete in its in its set.
There's nothing you can add to it. You cannot take away anything.
It's exactly the way it is. And so I decided to move on and build a house to watch the sunset on every continent.
Because all Americans have military bases on every continent.
So why not having a house to watch the sunset? Like a more.
A more. Poetic approach.
I also invited different artists to come and see this because it was like, really, it's a real paradise in this in this oasis.
So one of the first people I invited was Richard.
Richard Long. And we were sitting on top of this of the stairs watching the sunset.
And Richard said to me, OK, I'm going to give you the sun. So he made this big his biggest sculpture ever.
It's 30 metres in diameter, made out of, I think, about eight thousand breaks.
And this is on the bottom of the house. Now. The first.
Continent. I wanted to build this house was America.
I was I was in Utah in the desert of Utah, which is fascinating.
But then I decided that already things had been built there during landmarked and the 60s, 70s.
So, like, I went into South America, Peru, where I almost find the right spot.
But then, thanks to an assistant of mine, an architect from Chile.
We find this island in Patagonia. And this is the island.
It's made out of marble. And these are these caves that you can go in to drive in or walk into it.
Now, I was I was then confronted with something new.
I mean, it's so beautiful that you cannot build anything on top of it.
And since I'm not an architect, I have the freedom not to build it.
So. I decided to dig a tunnel inside.
So in the last five years, we have been working with, I don't know, five or six people or even more digging a tunnel into this mountain on the island.
And. And it's all white marble. They are very good at it because like in that part of Patagonia,
the people there are so many miners, miners in people who mined gold mines at copper mines.
So they're very, very good in like digging a hole. And I never knew that you can actually with explosives being quite precise.
And this is inside this house. So this you see like this is the entrance turns and you have a cupola and then a
small window towards the west where you can see the sunset and it's spectacular.
This is the house that night. If you can see something and you only see this light, and that's like the house inside the.
The mountain, the island. The island did not have a name.
Because the land is so big that most mountains don't have names.
Only the big glaciers have names. And so this island didn't have a name.
And the people living there before were called, oh, no, they were naked people.
They lived under very, very harsh circumstances. They lived naked and they were the owner.
And so I put my name and owner. So it's now no donor island.
And then four for Europe. It's.
I don't know if it's going to work out yet, but it's in Norway, in front of the museum, in Stavanger on the lake.
And this building would be then in in cement.
To China, I mean, for Asia, it's going to be in the southern part of Asia.
If China in Gwilym Young saw you probably notice this from paintings, right?
This mountain's in in in grilling.
Young saw also spectacular plates. Then at the same time, I also did things in in in Switzerland, outside of this little town that,
you know, I could acquire a park in the end of this last section, 1998.
And it was the reason I wanted this is to to see what kind of outdoor sculptures you can make.
It's usually very difficult because you're usually the loser if you make a sculpture which is 10 metres tall and the tree is fifteen.
So you're usually always lose it. So like I approach is a bit different.
This is a house that disappears by remote control. Okay.
On there, on the left, you can see anything. The middle comes out.
And it disappears again. I mean, you can you can really live it would be a great house for Gadhafi now, someone like that.
And the reason also why I did this is because, like so many people come to this valley of the anger,
Dean, they build this the houses that are only used five weeks out of the out of the year.
They are imitations of this great architecture of Dean,
which is one of the most intelligent architecture in the in the arts, which also we're also Le Corbusier also studied.
And Norman Foster is living there.
So he he came many times to look at it. So like I could see in his eyes, like, oh, my God, this is like this is really irritating.
Like, he comes to, like, the artist and does something like that.
And it's interesting to see, like, how the gap between architecture and sculpture is so close.
Right. I mean, it's like it's a like Goudey. What kind of sculpture would you put in front of the house of Goudey or like or.
It's not like in the 60s, let's say, in New York, where they used to build bangs on Wall Street,
which has a piazza in front to put the car there or whatever. You know, it's it's a place to put the sculpture.
Now, you don't have that anymore in Beijing. For example, if you see the building of of Rain Kohlhaas CCTV, it's a sculpture in itself.
Already, houses don't go up straight. They go up crooked in a or like also the the house.
But that hasn't veered. So I'm sorry that by doing at all the what is I call the Bird's Nest.
It's a sculpture in itself. You cannot imagine putting anything in front of it.
Right. So this park has.
Bridges has Houses has. Also, this tower, which is made out of hair.
I wanted something like more kinetic. And this is I have to.
Oh, sorry. This is one of the last works which took it took me four years to build it.
This is one piece of marble. It's nine metres. Twenty five.
Do you know. Do you know metres or. It is 27 feet.
Twenty eight feet. Something like that. It's one piece of marble out two metres by two metres.
OK. And you can't get what is interesting is that you can actually get this from Karara from inside the mountain.
You can bring it down to the valley to peer through Santa and you can work.
So like having him being able being able to get such a big piece of marble, you better do something.
Good. I mean, try to make the best out of it. So what I what it it is like is like I, I emptied from the inside, okay.
It was 120 tons to begin with. But you see, they had to start with a door.
Okay. And go inside the stall and empty everything and throw everything out of the out of the door which is like 100 tons it out of the door.
And they were like inside the stone. Three generations who are in that digging this piece of marble.
And then now it's in a collection outside of Brussels.
OK, yeah, certain. I want to talk a little bit about sculpture.
If you want. Growing up in this mountain, Ind., and his village village in St.
In the Engadine, we have like five months out of the year is snow.
And when the snow melts, the mountains are grey.
So you're like actually very, very you have these two colours. And of course, like growing up there, your eyes become sensitive to that.
If you if you are in India or you're born in Brazil.
Of course, my work would be much more colourful, but coming from this region is actually just like greys and whites.
That's already enough. And my favourite material in sculpture has been from the very beginning, plaster,
because not only of the colour, which is so close to snow, but also the consistency.
I mean, it's it's also material. You have to work fast and for a very short time.
Plaster has the same consistency as as snow.
So I throw this at the wall.
This is an installation in Bury's also did some one installation at the Vienna ones where you just throw snowballs at the wall in plaster.
And these are. The mountains that I see from my from my window.
Which was done in 2001. It took me a long time to realise, you know, we always look too far when we do sculpture.
It's always like, oh, you want to do this? It actually what is right right in front of you that the obvious what you're more familiar to takes.
Sometimes more time to do. To do it.
And these are the mountains that I see from from my window in in Switzerland.
And there are two plaster. Another thing is, if you grew up in the mountains, I always go back now to my youth,
which is always which is kind of like probably by the by when you are two or three years old.
Everything is already done, right. I mean, the way you look at things, the sensitivity to colour, but also this.
I realised much later that by going back to my town where people sit under benches, old people sit in front of their houses and they always look up.
It's not like in Italy or in or in Greece where the old people sit in front of their houses and they spit to the ground and they look always up.
And that it's for me. Also, like, if I have to concentrate on something, it has to be a three metres 30.
That's like the way I can concentrate better.
And so New York was like not important of the light or like I had to get like a loft, which was three metres 30, which I just sold.
The other day after 33 years. So this is like a mead becoming a donkey.
The transformation of me becoming an An and becoming a donkey.
This is this is called Greyhound carrying my broken neck.
I did break my leg when I was 14 years old. I went to fast skeet too fast.
And in such a bad skier, Bielecki too fast, broke my leg and then put this on the Greyhound because this piece has to do with speed.
OK. The dog doesn't have even feet. I can see now. And this shows like my fraction fraction.
It was like a nightmare. It was horrible. So I had to. Later on to do this in order to get rid of it.
This is one peak walking on two also in plaster. And this is another material which are very much like it's white marble.
This is this piece is called Sitting on My Face.
And also, like, again, like three metres, 20, it's always it's a measurement, it's always like three metres straight.
That's like you have to concentrate on this.
I mean, I could not sit on my face at three metres twenty five, but like up otherwise after he was done and I had to change something.
It's up there. This is sled.
Which goes in. Which doesn't work because it goes in all directions. Also carved out of one piece of marble.
There are many people who lived in the Engadine, this valley attracted so many people because of its beauty,
which I said before, but also people are only saying how great the Engadine is.
Also the English. They love the country's unmarrieds and do the crest around.
They actually invented English. People invented the the the the winter winter sports.
I mean. People from there would not climb a mountain or go skiing.
But like the English came and then they started in like 1850 to to do sports and also need to Nietzsche Road signs to see through their.
It still attracts lots of people like Rita.
And you always see artists like Snob or whether they're always attracted his values.
So like when I was when I was little, we used to go to this house in in sales.
I don't know if it's, you know, that's like up in the operating it in.
And that's where nature lived. He he rented this room for four for three or four years.
He paid one Swiss franc for it. And. And as I said, there was very little boy.
I could only see, like his moustache, like on my eye level.
All what I can see was this Snout's now because it's like he had too much such a moustache at the end, you couldn't even see his mouth.
It was almost like a radio talk or something. So like he was like, oh, this is moustache.
So later on I made like this.
Neetu moustache. And it's actually in his bed. OK.
It's like the. The base for it is the bed.
My father was a hunter and there were antlers everywhere in the house, and especially this one, which was the engines.
I don't know exactly where it was. I gave myself one day, a half a minute or even less to write something on it.
It has on one side, four points, on the other hand. On the other side, he has three points.
So like three, three and four. So I.
I wrote [INAUDIBLE] You, which probably also the. The Deserto said to my father before he was killed.
When I was when I was starting in Paris and I really did study almost nothing, I mean, it was like I went to Paris in 68.
In April 68, the air was so thick.
I mean, because like everyone preparing for May 68. And there was it was in this university in Branson.
So it was like. They were all they were 13 left wing groups, Marxists.
They were like, I think for Marxist groups and Leninist Trotskyists.
And this was like this is what what went on at that time.
Really, the only thing we really learnt is to throw stones and running from the police.
But he was his girl. I think she was from Turkey. And she was like she was doing research.
And she's spent a lot of time at the time thinking what what materials have not been used in art,
which I find that completely kind of like ridiculous. No, I mean, it doesn't matter.
And the other people are doing the revolution. And she came out and no one had used soap at the time.
So, like, so I don't know if they'd like if they did a sculpture thing.
So but it's like it's kind of like thinking of that time.
I thought I should do a soap sculpture.
And because, like, this is my stood in Beijing and you have all this very prolific, great assistance and you constantly have to give you work again.
You know, just like this, workers in Africa, those countries have to build something.
So in in in China, it goes like it's.
It's constant activity. And so I said, okay, let's make a piece out of soap.
And this is shown at in Brussels. And it's got 625.
The reason why 625. Because we also counted how many points discovered.
Now you have, like you, has what had been working for a long time, especially in the 80s,
were juxtapositions, trying to put two things together, which has nothing to do.
Okay. Like let's take a a year and put two and put that together with something which has nothing to do.
OK. Which is not easy, you know, because if you put an ear to sausage, could be the ear could be in the sausage and so on.
And so in this thing, this here is like what you have here also kind of like it's juxtaposition because it's it's it could be it could be a stone.
Right. Which is very hard. But then you have the softness of the soil.
So, like, if you put these two together, sometimes you create something which has tension.
It could be you create something could could be maybe funny at times.
Oh, you can also, if you're lucky, create something which is interesting.
No. Which means nothing, actually.
When I was in Italy in in the nine in the eighties eighty five, I was living above the butcher shop.
And one day I went to the foundry and I saw that they had, like, this tung's like in the window.
So I just took one, went to the foundry and had that cast in bronze. And this has been like since eighty five.
Always kind of like, kind of like the thread through the work.
And the reason why, why it's like that is because as a sculptor, you know,
you measure in metres, you measure in, in inches and, and, and whatever feet.
But like I think that you have to have your own measurement. You have to create your own measurement.
Something which is only yours. And if you have like this done here, which is thirty nine centimetres or thirty seven, and you have this one,
which is five metres eight, it's exactly as high as as the make the David of Michelangelo.
It's not easy. It's not. It's not just like.
You just don't in large, it's like a completed sculpture.
Because you have to make it much longer. You have to make it much.
You have to change it in order. Which is. That that the work turns out right.
Did you understand that? I don't know if I did understand that, but it's something that that is very important.
I think that to have to.
To have this own measurements, because actually big is nothing else than small enlarged.
But in this case, it becomes a different sculpture. And had done even Scott Dung's, which are taller.
There is one which is like 10 million, not ten and a seven metres, 80 and so on.
This one was just shown in Paris. And it's about time and again back to plaster.
This is back in Beijing. It's the sculpture we just got hanging and waiting as a waiting.
First it was called hanging in waiting because like, whenever you put something on the wall, you have to wait about five minutes.
If it doesn't fall off, it's fine. Right. You hang something like, wait a minute, two minutes to five minutes inside.
Then I remember in New York. I was. I was. Sleeping under a sculpture for about.
Five years. It was like on a nail, which was crooked.
It was very heavy. I mean, it could have killed me any time, you know.
But I felt that you sleep better under conditions like that. So.
So this is like hanging and waiting. It's a piece in ma.
In in white. In plaster. And there is a whole group of these pieces.
Now, this is also shown in Brussels. And his extension, again, means hang in there.
Others saying fairly, like it's almost like they're falling out.
You know, I mean, you have this kind of like this piece that hangs there and it's made out of plaster.
Would it be made out of out of stainless steel? That's a completely different thing.
Now, you see, it's actually stainless steel and plastic combined electric combined materials like this,
as you can see there, all kinds of different materials. It just made the golden calf.
And the reason why I like to to use different materials and not like use I don't know, steel like Richard Sayre on that is because, like.
Probably, most probably has to do with having to deal with languages because like my mother language, I could only speak 10 percent out of my life.
If it go ten minutes this way, they speak Italian. So as we speak Italian.
You go the other way, 20 minutes. They speak German, so to speak German. Select at high school.
We had seven languages. I'd like to deal with all these languages as probably also to do that later on my work.
At least I start like working with different materials and not just stick to one material.
And this is in Chinese. Do means a mole.
OK. And until this is called Mao.
It's not Mao Zedong, but it's martyrdom. I mean, Mao with the mole because he's got this big mole.
So I did like this piece in charcoal.
It was also shown in this Estonian belly.
But I also to show this in China, where you have to be a little bit careful because you cannot say anything about Mao.
OK. You can write it in English, but make sure it's not in Chinese because, you know, if you have to have the next visa they might like.
You might not get it maybe. And this is pizza night. This is a mountain made out of out of coal.
Every like that material is great.
I mean, I don't know who, again, used coal, but like, this is this is pizza night, which is a mountain above Sunbury, which is very famous.
So. And then, as I told you, I just started painting less than two years ago.
It happens real. I always had an interest in painting, but I really didn't know firsthand what to paint or how to paint.
I was not trained as a painter. And it just happened in China because you have so much time.
You have all this assistance. It's like I went out but canvas and made a portrait, but made a portrait of myself being a rice farmer.
The great thing about painting, which is nothing actually to do with resculpt.
With sculpture is that you can do it. It's very you can do whatever you want.
I mean, you can be like the rice farmer. You can be like criminal impunity and and also like doing sculpture all the time.
You constantly have to deal with reality. It's exactly what it is.
You know, that's what both layered one set. It's sculpture is boring because you have always to go around to look at.
Right. So here, I'll tell you, just like in front of you. You can be.
You can be. This is my assistant D.A. in.
And this is my taichi teacher. So like people who are in the studio, I paint and up there and canvas and there are very small.
They're like Somalia about the right size so that you can carry around.
And this is also a self-portrait with Alzheimer's. This is probably what would have happened if I ever get Alzheimer's.
So, like, you can put yourself in a position or in the future, and that's it.