The Venice Questionnaire #7: Valentin Carron
ArtReview sent a questionnaire to a selection of the artists exhibiting in various national pavilions of the Venice Biennale, the responses to which will be published over the coming days. Valentin Carron is representing Switzerland. The pavilion is located in the Giardini.
What can you tell us about your plans for Venice?
I don’t have a special project for Venice Biennale, but continue my work on various series that I’ve been showing in the past two years in different exhibitions. All the works will be new but operate within these preexisting series. There will be a two-headed serpent, copies of stained glass 'windows’, flattened instruments cast in bronze, a restored Piaggio Ciao. There are titles such as Die zerbrochene Brücke eurer reinen aber unerwarteten Infamien, You they they I you or Ciao (n° 6). The architecture of the pavilion is very modernist and smooth, which I want to emphasize rather than to disturb.
Are you approaching the show in a different way to how you would with a ‘normal’ exhibition?
No, I'm not looking at the context in which I show my work. For me one venue is worth the same effort as another. I think I would have approached this space in the same way as if it had been the architecture of a gallery in the Ruhr.
Valentin Carronimperia V, 2012. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich; Ciao n°4 (nero), 2012, Piaggo Ciao restored. Courtesy of the artist Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich.
