An heir to pop art, Valentin Carron is best known for creating works that reproduce vernacular elements from rural parts of Switzerland. He appropriates everyday items such as traditional shop signs or architectural details from his natal Valais, looking critically at the original sources. In the case of this twisted iron grid, the form was drawn by hand from a lattice installed in a public building. Of this work, Carron has said that he “wanted to sabotage and undermine the intrinsic authority and mission of protection of these urban objects by redrawing them hesitantly, sensitive and fragile.” A blacksmith replicated the artist’s trembling lines in stainless steel, so that the sculpture’s mat black finish evokes the lines of an ink drawing. The result is a kind of low metal relief, where the detached geometry of the grid combines with the imperfect traces of the artist.

Image: Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich / New York
Photo: Stefan Altenburger Photography, Zurich