Actually, you've seen enough of them lately.

But not in this form.

As tall as a man, with the tip in front, a syringe sticks in snow-covered meadow soil, in a barren high mountain landscape beset by puffy clouds.

"Vial" is the name of the work that the artist José Antonio Barrientos de Oria designed for the 2021 Biennale SMACH (an acronym for San Martino Art Culture History), on a mountain meadow below the 2875-meter-high Peitlerkofel in South Tyrol's Badia Valley.

Bernd Steinle

Editor in the department "Germany and the World".

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The background, of course, was the corona pandemic and the global efforts to get it under control, above all through vaccinations.

In connection with this, however, Barrientos de Oria asked another question: Wouldn't there be as much global commitment possible to deal with the climate crisis and protect natural landscapes as against Corona?

Or rather necessary?

An experimental field on the mountain

Art and mountains often appear as opposites, as if they were alien worlds that do not really come together and could only form a successful connection in exceptional cases.

Mountains are art enough for mountain lovers, art lovers prefer cities to mountains.

But the contrast can also be an opportunity, as Ute Watzl shows in her volume "Mountains of Art": Instead of getting lost in the city in the umpteenth gallery in the eternal competition, art in the mountains sometimes unfolds astonishing through unusual ambience and surprising contrasts Effect.

This is not always without friction, the urban and rural world collide without conflict.

Some locals are anything but enthusiastic when artists from afar use their natural landscapes, transform them according to their taste, use a place, a mountain, a valley as a projection surface and experimental field for their ideas.

The discussions about it can also be productive, the projects can attract attention, attract new visitors, promote the development of a region.

And enrich the cultural life in the communities.

Ute Watzl brings together very different forms of art in the mountains in her volume.

She presents temporary land art projects, looks around sensational buildings such as the Liaunig Museum, which lies like a stranded spaceship in the hilly landscape of Carinthia, describes unusual exhibition venues, classic museums and original art locations such as the Muzeum Susch in the Engadin, which houses exhibitions , symposia, research projects, performance and residency programs.

With an unobstructed view of the starry sky

Imposing installations such as Olafur Eliasson's work "Our Glacial Perspectives" on the Grawand (3251 meters) in the Ötztal Alps, which can be reached via a 400-meter-long ridge, are just as much a part of it as charming ideas such as the "Null Star Hotel" by the Frank brothers and Patrik Riklin in the Swiss Safiental: a simple double bed with bedside table, lamp, stool, a small wall at the front and terrace floor, which stood in the open countryside in the mountains for a summer.

No walls, no roof, no shelter, no neighbors.

But with an unobstructed view of the starry sky.

Ideally at least.

Ute Watzl describes the attraction of these mountain works in magnificent pictures and detailed texts.

She explains the origin and background and tells of the impressions that they left on her.

art and mountains?

Actually fits together perfectly.

Ute Watzl: mountains of art.

20 surprising places of international art.

AS Verlag, 220 pages, 39 euros.