Môtiers, take two -- soon over, sadly!

Remember the post about the open-air art exhibition at Môtiers, in the Jura above Neuchâtel? Well, I was hoping to go back for a second look, but it's been so busy here that there's barely time to create the long-promised second post about that magical show.
Above, a reminder of "Bleu du ciel" (Sky Blue) by Katja Schenker after Relax' UNIMOTIERS.
... from which a rain-bow coloured little road leads to a curious object in the meadow. (I gather the rainbow is from a previous show):Can you guess what it is? Don't peek below just yet, have a think... :)
Yes, a huge bed, with an "eiderdown" in the shape of a gently rounded, snowy landscape. Peculiar, touching. (Tina Z'Rotz et Markus Schwander: In den Hügeln [In the Hills]).
This image just to show the dimensions of this piece. The person on the left is a girl, maybe fifteen years old.
A little further downhill, the patient, art-loving farmers painstakingly keep a field cropped, manoeuvring their tractors ...
... around a billboard depicting three cows grazing and nibbling at the Swiss organic food producers' logo of a budding blade of grass (or some other bud).
In the nearby woods one comes across more curious objects, like this beautiful door that reflects the trees and the sky...... without actually leading anywhere, or this quirky piece:Kerim Seiler's Fusionobjekt is a set of picnic benches "woven" into a tree.
The shadows weave another pattern...

Elsewhere, near a bridge that leads into steeper woodland, cars drive, people and dogs walk across a gash in the concrete that only at very close range reveals human shapes – finger-length aluminum moulds crammed together and held in by wire mesh. (Marcus Egli: Passage clandestin)
The sinister allusions are brought home with sickening force in Martin Disler's nine bronzes from his series Häutung und Tanz, 1990-91 (Moult and Dance). The name of this piece sounds so much more positive that his figures, which reminded me of images from Hiroshima and Nagasaki...
They become half-way bearable by the memory of the "eternal" peace at the nearby waterfall: And because I'm not really such a pessimist, I turn to more cheerful things, like this door in the middle of the village, which, presumably, does lead somewhere.
(Sylvie Fleury: Mushroom, with Relax' UNIMOTIERS in the background.)
The neat thing about this kind of show is that it hones one's senses so that one begins to see art even where there is none, or only accidentally so.I wish I could have asked someone about the purpose of this wheel -- I'm sure it's a very ingenious piece of agricultural engineering.

Open-air Art at Môtiers, NE, Switzerland - Take One

Hello again!
Today I want to share with you a few, just a few, of the 150 photos I took last Sunday during a multi-hour walking tour of one of the best open-air art exhibitions anywhere.

Môtiers is a lovely old village tucked away in the Travers valley in the Jura mountains near the French border. The old train route to Paris goes through there, Pontarlier is the border town. Just in case you want to look it up on Google Maps, say... :)
The approach by train affords some stunning views. This sheer cliff of calcareous rock rising high above the wooded hills, for example - Les Creux du Van:
This red arched bridge across the Travers river in the village before Môtiers resembles one very near where I live - the one in Bern is a little bigger, mind.
One of the architectural highlights of Môtiers, the Hotel des Six Communes. Might have been a storehouse for grain at one time (I'd have to research that, which I will do, on a rainy day, when I'm less busy).
The town has just a couple of streets. Most buildings are old, two-storey terraces, low-ceilinged, with just the right amount of asymmetry to be attractive. Many of them are beautifully restored, probably not least because the art exhibition has brought in a number of wealthy new home owners. Opposite this building is a beautiful old inn, La Tanière:On one of the hottest days this year, it was very pleasant to sit in the ancient porch.
At the end of the main road, this is the view looking back towards the village (above and below).
Not all of the place is quite so idyllic -- inspired by John Armleder, who declared a mundane chimney to be art (sans titre), I decided to find and photograph some landscape sculptures: I suppose one could even find this kind of thing beautiful. But this?
Not really, eh?
Farmer's art -- a shack full of rusting implements -- it's not only on Mull and elsewhere in Western Scotland that one finds this kind of thing...
... a strange kind of beauty ... ... time, the great artist.

******

But now, some "real" art (in brackets, the artists according to the brochure/guide one receives at the entrance in lieu of a ticket), by way of my very personal look at two pieces to get us started:
(Roman Signer, La même grandeur / la même forme Une autre couleur, frames Christoph Draeger's Wicker Man seen on the top of the hill on the horizon.)
An old "friend", so to speak, this whimsical sculpture stood on "my" crossroads all summer last year. It's a diving platform with a difference... Love the uselessness of it! (L/B, Diving platform) -- and that's why here's another view of it, with an orange/green/white caravan (Lori Hersberger, sans titre) standing equally uselessly at the edge of a copse:A mirror in a field, a logo in Boeing lettering that says "Baghdad" high above the valley (Marco Poloni) ...
... a "village" made of farmers' silos (Bob Gramsma: Chez Wälchli, Rust, Gossweiler, Fahrni, Stucki et Muff, Ol#7110, 2007 -- at the entrance a comment announced that anyone can take one of these monsters home if they like -- they're quite spacious, actually.)
In the nearby woodland, not far from a magical waterfall, mysterious objects float high above the ground:
(Erica Pedretti, Windhosen [Wind Socks]).
Four feathery, fairytale, scaley "needles" (Alexandre Joly, Escadron d'objets volants [Squadron of flying objects]) are actually -- let me be blunt -- kajaks or canoes covered in peacock feathers. Sadly, my photos don't to the real thing justice, at all!
(Victorine Müller, Le moment végétatif) -- a whisper of light among the trees.
A little further on, Excalibur is still firmly held in the giant's rocky grasp near the shallow caves and La Sourde waterfall:
(Artist unknown, remnant of a previous installation.)
On the path leading up to the waterfall, suddenly a glint of gold, a nugget, engraved with "Parle-moi d'un village" [Tell me about a village], then another, and another, each one bears a different phrase, some of which are obliterated by rocks that fell on them in the past bad weather seasons. (Artist unknown, remnants of a previous installation.)

Don't even dream of running away -- these feet and socks are concrete casts (Jean-Claude Schweizer, Et rêver d'évasion).
No, the dark patch in the field is not the couple's shadow, but ...
... a hole in the ground that alludes to the fact that the neighbouring village of Travers used to be famous for its asphalt mines (Katja Schenker, Bleu du ciel [Sky blue]).If you step down into the bottom, all you can see is an edge of green grass and the blue sky above you -- magical!
Katja Schenker's land-art installation really catches my breath.

Thank you for visiting! come again -- I'm hoping to find time soon for another look back at this lovely event (which will end with fireworks and the incineration of Ursi, Bernahrd, Basil, Brutus and Jwan Luginbühl's Finale, a wooden structure I did not photograph, on September 22, 2007 -- you still have time to go look at all these pieces yourself).