Exhibition 2011

For its sixth edition, Môtiers – Art en plein air offered Swiss artists another opportunity to leave museums and galleries behind and confront nature.

In Môtiers, the artists found warm-hearted people willing to share an exciting adventure with them, ready to give up their premises, barn, garage, shop window or land, as well as their shovels, pickaxes, forklifts and farm machinery. And to give them something precious too: time.

Time to chat, have a drink, exchange thoughts on art or the weather, on the works from previous exhibitions… or on the organisers, who are nice but a bit crazy! Time to talk about ‘their’ village, its particularities, its attachment to a certain form of rebellion, resistance and detachment in the face of authority… Time to give to time!

For this sixth edition, the female members of the committee wanted the poster to be designed by a female artist. Sylvie Fleury was quickly chosen and enthusiastically accepted.

Her work explores the codes of femininity, fashion and luxury: designer bags, American cars, top-of-the-range cosmetics… She takes an aesthetic approach to the pleasure of consumption.

In 2007, she presented a giant blue mushroom in Môtiers, installed in a small house on the Chemin du Moulinet. Four years later, this mushroom reappears on the poster, surrounded by three ‘brothers’.

The result is brilliant, seductive, glamorous – and universally appreciated. If you look closely, you can even make out the artist’s reflection in the mushroom’s hat… or so she says.