Artist's book.
In this new artist's book, Valentin Carron presents a series of collages
mixing recent sculptures, details of backgrounds, and PhotoShop effects, all
specially realized to be printed in this volume. This book
reflects his sculptural practice in the two-dimensionality of the page and
the space of printed matter. Designed by
Gavillet & Rust, this book
includes a contribution by the writer Julien Maret.
Published on the occasion of Valentin Carron's Swiss Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale 2013.
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.).