Biography of Valentin Carron
Switzerland's very own deconstructor of myth Valentin Carron has made a name for himself by creating sculptures of commonplace, often rural items, that are key to the Swiss national identity. From casts of the exposed beams of a Swiss chalet to iron shop signs and traditional musical instruments, Carron examines how a collective national narrative forms, by investigating the roots of sentimentalism, mythologies, and symbols in his native country. Then reproducing these objects in different materials as well as through their placement in space, he strips them of their original charge and exposes the authority they once held. As Carron puts it, "I copied them while deactivating them."
Born in 1977, Valentin Carron lives and works in Martigny, Switzerland. He has had solo exhibitions at prominent institutions such as the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, the Musée d'art moderne et contemporain, Geneva, and the Kunsthalle Zürich. Carron also showed work at the Swiss Pavilion of the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013. He is the winner of the Overbeck Prize for the Visual Arts, the Prix Moët Hennessy, and the Eidgenössischer Kunstpreis. Carron’s work can be found in public collections such as the Migros Museum, Zurich, The Rubell Family Collection, Miami, and the Burger Collection, Hong Kong.
