Untitled by Heimo Zobernig

The Swiss artist Valentin Carron likes to work with found materials: he takes other artworks, craft objects or architectural elements, imitating, translating and reworking them. His concern is often “Swissness” and the role played by objects loaded with meaning in generating a feeling of national belonging. Such works feature prototypical emblems or symbols of Switzerland: clocks, summit crosses, or handcrafts like a large bear carved out of wood. But Carron replicates these things in synthetic materials like polystyrene. In this way, while clearly marking them as “fakes” that have been deliberately imitated, his approach also reveals the tradition to which they belong as something made and imagined. Where rustic handcrafts and authentic rural life are at home, he finds deliberate fabrication of tradition for reasons of social cohesion. Carron once glimpsed at a modernist church façade during a train ride from Lausanne to Vevey, Switzerland.