Belgian artist Pol Quadens was born in 1960. From modest beginnings as a coachbuilder, he has become an internationally recognised designer. He trained in the arts in Brussels with Pierre Sterckx – a life-changing encounter – but needs must, and Quadens found work twisting metal into bodywork for cars. This experience was nonetheless of benefit, as it taught him the techniques and materials of metalworking, and honed his vision to focus on the fine, undulating lines of the automobile – the basis of his artistic research. In fact it was in his own classic car restoration garage that he began designing his first furniture and other objects, aged just 25.

He first achieved success with the CD200 compact disc storage shelf, over 100,000 of which were made. He went on to exhibit at furniture fairs, including the highly regarded Milan Fair, and quickly became a name to be reckoned with on the international design scene, extending and enriching his creations to include the world’s lightest chair, made from carbon fibre, shoes also in carbon fibre, worn by Madonna, watches for Swatch Group, etc.

The transition from unorthodox designer and virtuoso draftsman into sculpture came naturally. Line is the common denominatorof all his work as it feeds the all-important ideas of asymmetry and balance. What may appear to be free, spontaneous shapes are in fact the fruit of having successfully tackled numerous constraints and taken experiments to their utmost limits.

With quasi sensory expertise, Pol Quadens takes pleasure in defying materials and techniques to extract their essence, testing their breaking point at every step. His installation for Château de Vullierens was unveiled in spring 2018. Sixteen stainless steel “stones” form the core of this work that will reach 4.5 metres in height.

Pol Quadens realized “Silex 2020” in polished stainless steel for the Château de Vullierens. Height 6m30 ! The first man-made tool, the flint reminds us of the naturalness and simplicity of polished stones from the Neolithic period before art, silver and society … a time when men hunted for their lives and the survival of their communities before starting to store and exchange goods. Discover the work from all angles in this video:

Laura Ford is an English artist born in 1961. Her passion for art took her to Bath Academy of Art and later the Cooper Union School of Art in New York, where teachers include Michael Pennie, Richard Deacon, Nick Pope, Anthony Gormley, Peter Randall-Page, Shelagh Cluett and Anish Kapoor. At 23 she began a postgraduate sculpture course at Chelsea School of Art in London. Ford’s work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale, and is part of the collections at the Tate, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Meijer Gardens, together with other contemporary art museums and a number of private collections. Her sculptures are full of fantasy, not to mention the occasional touch of affectionate cynicism. Ford uses her art to tackle social and political issues through the prism of humour and her own observations of the human condition. Her works are considered yet playful, created using a range of techniques including sculpture, drawing, painting, performance art and set design. When it comes to choosing materials, Ford fluctuates between the power of bronze or ceramic and the fluidity of fabric. The sculpture on show at Château de Vullierens represents six giant cats standing on their hind legs. This bronze feline army is part of her “Days of Judgment” series and is installed on the south terrace, offering an opportunity to contemplate our memories, somewhere between reality and imagination.

Dorothy Cross is possibly Ireland’s bestknown artist. Born in 1956 in Cork, where she attended the Crawford Municipal School of Art, she went on to Leicester Polytechnic in England. She also studied for three years at the San Francisco Art Institute, California, where she completed a degree in printmaking.

She is at home with a variety of media, ranging from sculpture and installation art to photography and video, though always exploring recurrent themes of sexual and cultural identity, personal history, memory and the gaps between the conscious and the subconscious.

Exhibiting regularly since the mid-1980s, Dorothy Cross came to wider public attention with her major solo installation, “Ebb”, at the Douglas Hyde Gallery in Dublin. This was followed by another installation, ” PowerHouse “, at the ICA in Philadelphia, Camden Arts Centre in London, and Kerlin Gallery in Dublin. Both these works incorporated found objects as well as items that had been in her family’s possession for many years. In this respect, Cross’s work has been described as “poetic amalgamation”.

Dorothy Cross is best-known for “Ghost Ship “, a public installation in which a disused light ship in Scotman’s Bay, off Dún Laoghaire Harbour in Dublin, was brought to life through the use of luminous paint.

Cross, who holds an honorary doctorate from University College, Cork, and is a past winner of the prestigious Pollock-Krasner Award, comes to Château de Vullierens with “Bed”. Carved from Carrara marble, this crumpled bed symbolises birth, death, sex and dreams. Favoured by Renaissance sculptors and once reserved for depicting saints, Dorothy Cross shifts registers and takes marble from sacred to secular in a thought-provoking work.

There are many different facets to the artist Gillian White, who was born in 1939. Though a well-known metal sculptor in Switzerland, she has lost none of her British spirit and the two form a perfect mix – much like her dual citizenship ! Having initially trained as a ballet dancer – a career she was forced to abandon for health reasons age 15 – she set her heart on becoming an artist instead. She pursued her chosen path with determination, combining studies (first at St Martin’s School of Art in London, then in Paris) with part-time jobs. Her single-mindedness caught the eye of Swiss artist Albert Siegenthaler, so much so in fact that the couple married, moving to Switzerland in 1966 where they built a studio with their own hands. This is where White started to create monumental works, chiefly from Corten steel. While Gillian White’s work can be described as rigorous in terms of the symmetry of its lines, its strict rhythms and its static gravity, this paradoxically results in atmospheric pieces that are instilled with harmony and poetry.

Werner Pokorny, a German sculptor born in 1949, studied sculpture at the Karlsruhe Academy of Fine Arts. It was to be a milestone in his life – first a student then a teacher, he has doubtless been an inspiration to an entire generation of young artists. Now based in Ettlingen (Germany), he has made Corten steel his material of choice, although wood also features in his sculptures. Pokorny’s work is significantly inspired by the idea of houses in their most elementary form. He represents them simplistically, yet recognisably, in a variety of positions : piled up, sloping, balancing… His sculptures situate the home in direct relation with the outside world, a metaphor for the role of art in public space. By presenting his work this way, the artist defines the spaces in which we live, and gives them an energy that goes beyond any purely pragmatic function. Pokorny develops a distinctive style through which we discover, and imagine, a powerful tension between complexity and simplicity. His works are as varied in form as the sites for which they are intended, from quietly modest to frankly monumental.

Herbert Mehler was born in Germany in 1949, and started working alongside his father, a wood sculptor, before studying at the Nuremberg Academy of Fine Arts, where in 1976 he received a prize in recognition of new talent. From 2003 to 2009, he created his first ‘Kavex’ series, whose title is a combination of the German words for ‘concave’ and ‘convex’. Using sheets of Corten steel which he cuts and folds into shapes observed in nature, he applies mathematics and technology to produce biomorphic sculptures – allegories of the organised beauty of the natural world. Despite their obvious connection with new technologies, Mehler’s sculptures are nevertheless in perfect harmony with the ancient lines to be found, for example, in Gothic cloisters, thus forging a dialogue between two eras that transcends the limits of space and time. In 2010, Mehler began a new series of sculptures, whose symmetrical curves freely create open shapes. This series is called ‘Apsida’, after the Greek word for apse or arch. 9 sculptures in the gardens.

Sculptor Étienne Krähenbühl was born in Vevey in 1953, attended the Lausanne School of Fine Arts, and went on to train in Paris and Barcelona before setting up his “laboratory of the imagination” in Yverdon, where he defies the laws of physics. Working with metal requires immense physical effort, and yet his tons of steel appear poised to fly off to another world. The artist uses the contrasts, textures and reflections inherent to metal to evoke something mysterious and far away, and builds on the different forms they take : empty/full, polished/corroded, flexible/ stiff. In two very different ways, he explores his materials’ many possible states. One uses the effects of time and water on iron, steel or even paper ; the other revolves around innovation with materials such as memory alloys and super-elastic nickel-titanium alloys. 12 sculptures in the gardens

The last one installed (in 2020) :

Totem on the Collonges Terrace of Portes des Iris.

At over 90 years old, Beverly Pepper was still creating. An obviousness, even stubbornness, that had earned her regular comparisons with Louise Bourgeois and Louise Nevelson. While she admired her two acolytes, she did not consider herself a sculptor. She likes to have no status, except that of “working metal as if it were paper”. The great lady, who has lived in Umbria for more than 50 years, has frequented the foundries all over Italy to be able to finally declare that the material has confided all its secrets to her.

Beverly Pepper’s career has been marked by a stroke of fate and a good dose of daring. In 1949, for example, she left Brooklyn and the life she led there to start all over again in Paris and studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. Seeing herself more as a painter, she decided to take up woodcarving in 1960, then seized her chance in 1962 when Giovanni Carandente, curator of the “Sculptures in the City” exhibition, asked her to experiment with welding, shaping and sculpting metal. She accepted and quickly set to work to acquire the talent that we know today, but which she had never practiced before! She was the only woman to exhibit among such great names as Henry Moore, Alexander Calder or David Smith.

Beginning of February 2020, we lost one of our best sculptors and most of all a great friend. We thank Beverly for all the supports she has given our sculpture park.  Her pioneering and monumental works are a source of pride and joy to all.

The International Art scene is talking about her :

New York Time article

Art News article

Manuel Torres was born in Malaga in 1938 and came to Geneva in 1960, leaving Spain and its rampant unemployment behind. He was taken on by Atelier des Charmilles as a metal worker and, in his spare time, discovered an interest in sculpting metal. Torres quickly acquired remarkable technical skill and expertise, though never imagined the career that lay ahead. His passion for sculpting metal grew such that in 1971 he decided to leave his job and devote himself entirely to artistic creation. From his studio in the Geneva countryside, Torres works tirelessly in his efforts to reveal metal’s inner soul, as he likes to put it.

Made in iron or stainless steel, his frequently monumental sculptures for public spaces are formed from interlocking geometries which evoke male/female duality, enfolding and embrace. These sensual, poetic and always highly symbolic sculptures can be seen in more than twenty locations – parks, streets and public buildings – in Geneva and throughout Switzerland. For the past two decades, Manuel Torres has also worked with blackened or oxidised iron, drawing on a fascination with Egypt to create long, solemn silhouettes that reach towards the sky. With forty years of work to his name, his fame has transcended national boundaries and his work features in numerous private collections as well as prestigious foundations. 20 sculptures in the gardens. On 19 January 2018, he died in Geneva, leaving a great void in the artistic world.