Artist's book.
In "Learning from Las Vegas" (1972), Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour, as a call to reinvigorate architectural design with symbolic content, advocated the study of the commercial strip and in particular, the role that signs play in conveying meaning and providing order to the landscape.
In "Learning from Martigny," Valentin Carron, offers a photo-documentation of his surroundings—the sources for some of his works—intertwined with images of his sculptures or paintings.
Designed by the studio
Gavillet & Rust/Eigenheer, this artist's book includes a new contribution by the writer Nicolas Pages.
Awarded: “Most Beautiful Swiss Books 2009”.
Alongside several artists such as
Andro Wekua,
Mai-Thu Perret, and
Vidya Gastaldon, Valentin Carron (born 1977 in Fully, lives and works in Martigny and Geneva), whose work has been shown in the last few years at the Kunsthalle Zürich, the
Palais de Tokyo in Paris, and the Conservera in Murcia, marks the emergence of a new artistic scene in Switzerland. His sculptures mark a renewal of appropriationist discourse: through the re-employment of vernacular forms that are not part of the dominant culture, the artist develops a project confusing genres. Neither authentic nor kitsch, not readymade nor really craft, these objects play with ambiguity (fake wood, fake concrete, fake bronze, etc.) and with an iconography of power and authority (public sculptures or commemorative monuments, traditional forms, etc.).
