Catch Vivian Suter’s Latest Exhibition In Nîmes, France

Leaves, raindrops, pawprints. Any of those may appear in paintings by Swiss-Argentine abstractionist Vivian Suter, the latter inspiring the title of her current exhibition at Carré d’Art–Musée d’art contemporain in Nîmes, France: “Disco,” the name of the 76-year-old artist’s youngest dog. This presentation is the third and last stop after the Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology in Lisbon, Portugal, and the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, and encompasses some 400 paintings filling all areas of the museum, from traditional galleries to its monumental staircase, plus 40 small collages by Elisabeth Wild, Suter’s mom who lived with her in her Panajachel, Guatemala, home until Wild’s death in 2020 at age 98. Suter paints and temporarily stores her work outside; after some had been warped and muddied by Hurricane Stan in 2005, instead of cleaning them, “I saw beauty,” she recalls. “My practice changed with this consciousness.” (Inclusion of Disco’s pawprints is part of that change.) Curator Hélène Audiffren concurs: “Made with and within nature, Vivian’s paintings are very contemporary, resonating with current environmental concerns. Furthermore, her hundreds of works uniquely interact with the museum’s modern architecture,” completed in 1993 by Foster + Partners. Another feature of the colorful pieces, which don’t have titles or dates, is that they can be hung in any direction, a flexibility and an individuality appreciated by such firms as Studio Collins Weir, which sourced Suter artwork in a recent residential commission.