Born in 1977 in Martigny, Valentin Carron has become well-known on the international contemporary art scene for iconic works such as the large cross that he created to grace the otherwise barren concrete plaza outside the XIV Biennale Internazionale di Scultura di Carrara, Italy in 2010.

Valentin Carron, Untitled, 2010
Installation view, XIV Biennale Internazionale di Scultura di Carrara, Italy
© the artist. Courtesy Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich

His exhibition at Venice will be curated by Giovanni Carmine from Ticino, currently director of Kunst Halle St. Gallen.

Carron’s work is heavily influenced by Valais, a region driven by tourism, the Swiss canton in which he lives and works. .Carron often takes familiar alpine images from the area and manipulates them to generate an ambivalent and disconcerting effect.

This practice, with the slightly pretentious name “appropriation art” is however in Carron’s case usually not off-putting or inaccessible. Picking references from nature, art history, theology and history like the Renaissance he is, Carron’s work speaks to both art professionals and casual viewers alike.

For example, greeting the visitor at the door of the Swiss pavilion this year will be a wrought iron snake whose form (over 80 metres long) winds through the architecture like a drawn line.

Carron’s serpent is a two-headed beast that becomes a decorative element in the modernist architecture of the Swiss Pavilion, designed in 1952 by Bruno Giacometti.

The intervention defines a path through the pavilion, treating its architecture respectfully whilst also querying the function and definition of the term “sculpture.” The gesture is typical of Carron’s practice which fearlessly employs archaic symbols, archetypal forms and references to art history. One might also draw the conclusion that Carron is also playing with central images in Christianity based on his choice of a serpent as the central figure coupled with the cross at Basel. One wonders what the participants in the “Holy See” pavilion, first time exhibitors will make of it?

Further works in the exhibition include “windows”—wall-based artworks inspired by the public and religious architecture of the 1950s which recall modernist abstract paintings, but are made out of fibre-glass; a collection of flattened musical instruments cast in bronze, hung so as to punctuate the space; and a Piaggio Ciao scooter transformed by its context into a pop readymade.

These apparently unrelated objects and elements create a disconcerting and ambivalent effect in which nothing is quite what it seems and all is thrown into question. The sum of the parts, according to curator, Giovanni Carmine, leads to “an elegant discussion concerning the complexity of defining sculpture.”

His creations evoke doubt regarding the authenticity of objects and the meaning commonly attached to them, and we are reminded that is ultimately a construction. Carron’s sculptures, paintings and installations contain references to pop art and appropriation art.

After studying at the art colleges of Sierre and Lausanne, Carron launched his career in 2000 with a series of exhibitions at Mamco and Centre d’Art Contemporain in Geneva were followed by solo exhibitions at Kunsthalle Zurich and the Swiss Institute in New York. Visitors of Art Basel 2009 will remember Valentin Carron’s enormous sculpture in the shape of a cross on the Art Basel exhibition ground. In 2010, Palais de Tokyo in Paris dedicated a solo exhibition to the by then internationally renowned Swiss artist.

The Swiss Pavilion in Venice is just around the corner from the main entrance to the Giardini exhibition site.

Salon Suisse:  a platform for lively international exchange in a relaxed old-world setting.

Complementing Valentin Carron’s exhibition at the Swiss Pavilion, the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia has organized an accompanying lecture series and events programme to take place at the Palazzo Trevisan degli Ulivi.

Located in a this lovely palazzo in the in the heart of Venice’s old town  the “salon” seeks to offer a relaxed platform for exchange on issues concerning contemporary art in a setting reminiscent of literary and art salons of the cities storied past.

“Salon Suisse” 2013 was curated by Berne-based art historian Jörg Scheller, who has focused the discussion on the legacy of Enlightenment in the globalized art world.

*Pro Helvetia is a foundation dedicated to promoting cultural works of nationwide and international interest. The foundation was established by the Swiss Government in 1939 and is still entirely funded by public money.