Alto Considers Time Through Patination And Sculpture With The Art 01 Bernar Venet (Live Pics)

We hear a lot about the convergence of art, fine watchmaking, and design these days, but some brands take the brief more seriously than others. Mark first told us to watch out for Paris-based Alto last year and gave us a look at its Art 01 model with a story introducing the new design-forward, architecture-inspired, independent brand.

Founded by Thibaud Guittard, a former Audemars Piguet executive and a passionate collector of art, design, and cars, Alto’s Creative Director is Raphaël Abeillon, who was previously a senior designer at Cartier. Offering brutalist architecture vibes, severe angles, and avant-garde 1970s automotive design influences, the Art 01 represents a singular platform through which the French brand is expressing its take on the luxury watch as a time-telling objet d’art. And now, with its latest iteration of the Swiss-made timepiece, Alto has enlisted a true giant of the contemporary art world for inspiration and collaboration, Bernar Venet. 

Venet is perhaps best known for his massive, Corten steel, collapsed beam sculptural structures that explore the ideas of arcs, lines, angles, as well as the passage of time through shape change and patina, on a major public scale.

His works have been installed and exhibited around the world, from Paris to Berlin, Tokyo to Seoul, and New York.  He’s rarely done product collaborations, with the notable exception of the Bugatti Veyron Grand Sport Venet, unveiled at Art Basel Miami in 2012 and showcased again at the Geneva Motor Show in early 2013. Painted with the mathematical equations that inform the lines and angles of Venet’s conceptual steel beam structures and powered by a 1,001-horsepower turbocharged engine, that car has been called “the fastest artwork ever.” 

It was a conversation with Guittard that convinced Venet to agree to transfer his artistic vision from large-scale forms and objects to a canvas as small as a wristwatch. He says the artist embraced the challenge of a greatly reduced field of play. 

Working with Alto’s creative director Abeillon, one of the project’s first tasks was identifying a case material that would convey the evolving color and patina of Venet’s steel structures and would be appropriate for a luxury watch. Corten steel itself wouldn’t work for plenty of reasons, including the requirement that the material interact with the wearer’s skin. 

Alto’s supplier partners helped the project team find, test, identify, and select a unique bronze alloy that would evoke the same warm brown tones of Venet’s steel sculptures while remaining stable and still developing a unique patina slowly over time. The Alto bronze is patinated and stabilized, but continues to slowly take on weathering through wear.

We were lucky enough to see the watch in person, and the bronze used on the Venet edition appears heavy and deep, but also particularly interactive with light. It gives the humble metal an unusually luxurious look and feel as a case material.

During a launch event in early April at the Venet Foundation, a sprawling set of properties displaying Venet and other contemporary art pieces in Le Muys, France, Alto executives showed off three watches at various stages of wear. While an unworn piece showed almost no variation of color on the case, the other two examples, which had been worn for three months and six months, respectively, had evolved significantly. 

Each showed distinct changes in patina on the 40 mm-diameter square case, with shifts to richer, more varied hues over time. Even so, the changed surfaces didn’t diminish the high-end quality feel and look of the case and watch, which remains light at about 68 grams and relatively easy to wear, despite the large diameter for a square case. 

It’s the dial of the new piece where Venet’s work is most clearly evoked. Also made from the same patinated and stabilized bronze material, it’s topographical and sculptural with bending arcs of material layered across the surface. Housed beneath the Art 01’s distinct faceted sapphire crystal, the interlaced arcs play with light and shadows that give depth and texture rarely experienced on a watch dial. 

It’s a significant shift in dial design for Alto, as previous models, including the most recent Monochrome versions, have all featured the same hexagonal, geometric dial pattern. With the Venet limited edition (of which just 10 pieces will be produced), Alto takes the dial in a flowing, organic direction that’s truly engaging. 

Venet told us this was the first time he’d ever worked on a watch and that he doesn’t usually wear a timepiece. Still, he relished the opportunity to express his ideas on a small, time-telling instrument, as the accumulation of hours, weeks, and years, as well as wear and interaction with the elements, is a key theme of much of his work, particularly his collapsed arc pieces. 

The Art 01 itself also explores the idea of time in novel ways. Like previous versions of the model, the Bernard Venet limited edition features a second hand that runs backward. It’s a quirky feature that demands one constantly consider the concept of time. 

It’s got the same micro-rotor movement as previous versions – the Cal. A01 with a titanium mainplate. The Alto movement was designed by Barth Nussbaumer, most recently noted in these pages as one of the three principals behind the independent brand Kollokium and responsible for the topographical dial and other design elements on its Projekt 02. We can see Nussbaumer’s design influence across the Art 01 lineup. 

The movement, produced by Le Cercle des Horlogers, runs at 4Hz and has 48 hours of power reserve, and the watch has 50 meters of water resistance, suggesting that it might be possible to add further to the patina with a saltwater swim. The watch comes on a Nubuck, calf leather strap with a titanium folding buckle that’s covered with a patinated bronze treatment. 

Alto hasn’t disclosed the price of the limited edition Art 01 Bernar Venet. It’s likely to be higher than the €25,500 previously listed for the Monochrome models. While it isn’t a new movement, it is a new case material and most certainly an entirely different dial. A dial designed and created with one of the most significant contemporary sculpture and installation artists working today. Just like Venet’s outdoor steel arc installations, these 10 watches will each develop their own singular story exploring the passage of time. 

ALTO ART 01 Bernar Venet, Reference MK5 BRz; 40mm width Bronze patinated Stabilized finishing case, with 50m water resistance.  Bronze patinated monobloc processed dial. Hours, minutes, and seconds rotating backward. Micro-rotor automatic movement with 4Hz frequency, 48h power reserve, and a Grade 5 titanium mainplate. Nubuck calfskin strap with folding titanium bronze coated clasp. Price: On Request

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