Utopix is the work and passionate path of Jo Pillet and his family.
It is a live in sculpture, exhibition spaces (indoor and outdoor), it is sculptures-games.
GORODKA: between sustainability and art
44-51-24-38 N 1-14-06-27-E
This is the GPS code to locate Gorodka, a place that does not appear on maps. However, it really exist.
ORESTE FERNANDO NANNETTI
The Law 180 of May 13, 1978, also known as the Basaglia Law, allowed the closure of the Italian psychiatric hospitals: patients were transferred to specific departments of the hospitals, and the buildings were gradually abandoned or converted.
PALAIS IDÉAL DU FACTEUR CHEVAL
Real self-taught, Ferdinand Cheval devotes 33 years of his life to build a dream palace in his garden alone.
NICOLAI TARASYUK
NICOLAI TARASYUK(1932-2015 | BELARUS) Nicolai Tarasyuk was born in 1932 in the community of Pruzhany, near the forest. During the World War II has restricted his childhood education, and brought traumatic events to the area. Nicolai was not affected by this disasters and he lived all his life in his farm. He married in 1953, […]
THE LITTLE CHAPEL
THE LITTLE CHAPEL(1878-1951 | UNITED KINGDOM) The Little Chapel of Les Vauxbelets was rebuilt twice before its creator was satisfied with his work. Brother Déodat joined the Guernsey Christian Schools in 1913 and devoted his life to building a miniature replica of the Basilica and Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes. The first chapel measured less than […]
FIORENZO PILIA
FIORENZO PILIA(1935 | ITALY) The farmer Fiorenzo Pilia had no formal and artistic education, but at the age of sixty he began making sculptures with residual material, resin, scraps and waste. The garden that Pilia began decorating in 1993 in 4.000 mq, outside the Sardinian village of San Sperate (Sardinia), represents the mystery of life.Pilia’s […]
PIERRE RAPEAU
PIERRE RAPEAU(1935-2007 | FRANCE) Pierre Rapeau, a biology teacher, was born in the Perigord area of France. One day, tired of the world, he returned in the local forest, where he had a lively memory of the walks he made with his grandmother, collecting mushrooms and herbs. “In the early 1980s, I was suffering from silence. I […]
POLITICAL SCULPTURE GARDEN
POLITICAL SCULPTURE GARDENM.T. LIGGETT(1930-2017 | USA) M.T. Liggett’s brightly painted metal cartoon figures dominate the roadside along a busy highway near Mullinville, Kansas, for almost a mile. In 1989, after retiring from a career in the military, Liggett returned to the farm on which he was born and began making metal sculptures using cutting and […]
THE HEIDELBERG PROJECT
THE HEIDELBERG PROJECTTYREE GUYTON(1955 | USA) Having grown un on Heidelberg Street and witnessed the tragic effect of the Detroit riot as a child, Tyree Guyton set about cleaning up the decaying area with the help of his grandfather Sam Mackey, his former wife Karen, and neighborhood children. In 1986, using the refuse they collected, […]
SALVATION MOUNTAIN
SALVATION MOUNTAINLEONARD KNIGHT(1931-2014) | USA Leonard Knight began painting and creating his Salvation Mountain after a failed attempt to fly the world’s largest balloon, which he had spent ten years trying to make. Knight decided to stay on in the launch area, in a part of the desert known as “Slab City”. Using hundreds of […]
THE BEER CAN HOUSE
In 1968, tired of mowing his lawn, retired railway upholsterer John Milkovisch (1912-1988) concreted over his garden and embedded thousands of marbles, buttons, rocks and pieces of metal in the paths, the walls and the wooden fence.
JUNKERHAUS
JUNKERHAUSKARL JUNKER(1850-1912 | GERMANY) Karl Junker devoted his life to a single visionary project, constructing a heavily ornamented house at Lemgo, near Hanover, Gemany. After studying architecture in Munich, Junker used money he had received from an inheritance to build the house. He led a solitary life living alone for 22 years, even though the […]
GUERINO GALZERANO
GUERINO GALZERANO(1922-2002 | ITALY) Guerino Galzerano was a baseborn farmer from Cilento (South Italy). After the marriage he emigrated to Germany as a hodman. In the 70s he was imprisoned in the psychiatric hospital of Aversa after a serious act of violence: in the outdoor spaces of the asylum he produced his first works. When he had […]
FOREVERTRON
FOREVERTRONDr. EVERMOR (1939-2020 | USA) In 1983 salvage worker Tom O Every (Dr. Evermor) passed his scrap business on to his son, began to call himself “Dr. Evermor”, and started on the task of creating “Forevertron”, a massive construction designed to travel in space. The visionary piece of his sculpture, made from scrap metal, machine parts […]
JACQUES LUCAS
JACQUES LUCAS (1944 | FRANCE) After meeting the sculptor Robert Tatin in 1968, Jacques Lucas was inspired to begin work on his house near Rennes, Britanny. He covered the building with heavily ornamented reinforced structures, their forms and swirling patterns reminescent of the stonework of medieval cathedrals. Lucas brought his wide knowledge of the architecture and […]
TUDOR VILLAGE
TUDOR VILLAGEKEVIN DUFFY(1945 | UNITED KINGDOM) Kevin Duffy is a self-taught artist who has spent the last years building his own visionary environment. The only purpose of his buildings is to satisfy a need in Kevin to build, to create something.For more than 30 years Kevin Duffy has been constructing his Tudor Village in the […]
PEARL FRYAR TOPIARY GARDEN
Working from his imagination, Fryar coaxed over 100 specimens of more than 20 different trees and plants, including holly, yew and juniper, into fantastic shapes, hearts, animals and abstract forms.
THE OWL HOUSE – HELEN MARTINS
THE OWL HOUSEHELEN MARTINS(1898-1976 | AFRICA) Helen Martins was born in 1897 in Nieu Bethedsa, South Africa, the youngest of six children. She gained a teaching diploma after attending school in Graaff-Reinet and in 1919 moved to the Transvaal to begin working as a teacher.In 1920 Helen married a fellow teacher, Willem Johannes Pienaar. The […]
MELINA RICCIO
MELINA RICCIO (1951 | ITALY) Carmela “Melina” Riccio, was born in 1951, in Ariano Irpino (Italy). Until the age of 33 she spent a common life taking care of her three children; she had worked as a modeller.In 1983, during the MACEF fair (International Home Show), she exhibited her realization, a bedspread with hand-painted lampshades […]
LAS POZAS
LAS POZASEDWARD JAMES(1907-1984 | MEXICO) The large-scale flowing construction of Las Pozas, set in the remote Mexican jungle, was devised by the eccentric English aristocrat Edward James. A poet and patron of Surrealist artists, James fell in love with this isolated area in 1945 on a trip to Xilitla. By 1962 James was able to […]
DANIELLE JACQUI
DANIELLE JACQUI(1934 | FRANCE) Danielle Jacqui was born in 1934 in Nice, to a jeweler father and a militant communist mother. The early 1970s were a founding period for Jacqui. She met Claude Leclercq, her second husband, who became a close companion in her artistic career until his death in 2000. A fellow brocanteur and […]
THE MINDFIELD
THE MINDFIELDBILLY TRIPP(1955 | USA) William Blevins (Billy) Tripp, born 1955 in Jackson, Tennessee, is a nationally known practitioner of outsider art as well as the author of numerous poems and a novel, “The Mindfield Years”, published in 1996.He’s the creator of “The Mindfield”, the largest work in progress and outdoor sculpture in Tennessee. The […]
BRUNO WEBER
BRUNO WEBER(1931-2011 | SWITZERLAND) Bruno Weber was born in 1931 in Dietikon, Switzerland, and grew up in a large Baroque house which, he recalled, had “many mysterious rooms [which] had never really been explored”. The experience, he said, made a lasting impression on his imagination.At the age of 12 he began painting with oil colours. […]
VEIJO RÖNKKÖNEN
VEIJO RÖNKKÖNEN(1944–2010 | FINLAND) Veijo Rönkkönen was born in 1944, and he has lived all of his life in an isolated farm in Parikkala, Finland, near the Russian border. Here he has build a garden inhabitated by nearly five hundred human figures made of concrete. At his 16th, Veijo went to work in a local […]
ANNUNZIO LAGOMARSINI
ANNUNZIO LAGOMARSINI(1932-2018| ITALY) Annunzio Lagomarsini has worked for many years in the family building company: he taught himself engineering and structural aspects for built several constructions. Since 1977, for seven years, he created his “flying house” near LaSpezia, Liguria, where he lived with his wife. He used rejects from the building sites or shipyards, for […]
RICHARD GREAVES
RICHARD GREAVES(1952 | CANADA) The self-taught artist Richard Greaves was born in the Montreal area in 1952. He studied theology and worked in the hotel business. Since 1989, he has devoted himself to the creation of a huge architectural environment in Beauce, Quebec, that is in constant expansion: Greaves erects cabins that appear to be […]
NEK CHAND
NEK CHAND AND THE ROCK GARDEN(1924 –2015 | CHANDIGARH, INDIA) One of the most enchanting expressions of the outsider art world is visible in Chandigarh and is the result of a single man who was put in the act of transforming the waste of a nascent metropolis into beauty. Nek Chand Saini is an Indian […]
The Encyclopedic Garden of ARMAND SCHULTHESS
Swiss born Armand Schulthess he left work in 1951 to retire into a secluded house in Auressio, Canton Tessin. Here he built an incredible garden.