Valentin Carron

This book is the first full monograph on Valentin Carron, a Swiss artist whose career was gaining momentum. It appears in the same year he presented solo exhibitions in New York and London. Critics have credited his sculptures with reviving the debate around appropriation. The works resist easy labels: they seem neither genuine nor tacky, neither found object nor handmade craft. Carron builds that tension with materials that imitate rather than are what they seem, such as faux wood, bronze and concrete, and he draws on imagery of authority and power, often through familiar forms like civic statues and memorial monuments.

The volume also places Carron within a wider group of young Swiss artists who were quickly earning critical attention, among them Andro Wekua, Vidya Gastaldon and Mai-Thu Perret. Read together, his rise is presented as a sign of a new Swiss art scene taking shape.