VALENTIN CARRON (B. 1977)

Executed in 2013, the year that Valentin Carron represented Switzerland at the Venice Biennale, L’oiseau fou (after Marco Pellegrini) is a striking example of his appropriative practice. Throughout his oeuvre, Carron takes cultural objects – artworks, public monuments and Swiss icons – and reproduces them in alien materials. Sculptures originally cast in bronze or stone are reborn in lightweight, synthetic media, imbuing them with a sense of ethereal, otherworldly strangeness. In the present work, Marco Pellegrini’s L’oiseau fou – a sculpture formerly installed on the lawns of the Manoir de Martigny – is refashioned in a combination of polystyrene, wood and fibreglass. Elsewhere, Carron’s muses include works by Alberto Giacometti, as well as ancient statues, Modernist iconography and motifs associated with his native Valais. Appearing before the viewer like imposters from a parallel universe, his works probe questions of authenticity and authorship, seeking to reanimate objects that – through their ubiquity – have faded into the fabric of everyday life. His practice takes its place within the legacy of Marcel Duchamp, Pop Art and the 1970s ‘Pictures Generation’, inviting particular parallels with artists such as Sturtevant and Jeff Koons.