The Boy with Thorn, extracted by Valentin Carron from the catalogue of sculptures that have left their mark on art history, has been one of the most frequently copied by artists from Antiquity to the present day, with museums joining in when the fashion for merchandising meant that visitors could leave with miniature reproductions of the masterpieces they had seen there. The introspective figure, depicted as he tries to remove from his foot a thorn that has been preventing him from moving forward, signals a new direction for an artist better known for his appropriations than for a studio practice in the tradition of modern sculpture. While the notion of the sculptural has always been at the heart of his work, this new series sees the return of his hand. Out of modelling clay borrowed from his daughters, he forms little characters alone or in pairs, in a repeated attempt to create a connection. At a time of ‘divided families’, fathers have learned to take their children by the hand, and this new series of adults carrying children in their arms seems to complete a forgotten section in the history of representations of the family. These pocket sculptures have each been fired inCarron’s kitchen oven, then scanned, enlarged, and imprecisely re-sculpted from a wooden block by a high-precision machine. The wood is larch, from one of the most ancient species of conifer. Itisfound in abundance in the Valaisregion where the artist lives and is traditionally used for the construction of frame structures and chalets. The wooden sculptures hand-painted by Carron now face the viewer from their museum pedestals. Thetransubstantiation ofone material intoanother isattheheart of a fragile dynamic that spans his entire body of work, wavering between authenticity and artifice, honesty and duplicity, humility and pride, like the title given to the exhibition, which echoes Gustave Courbet’s famous painting La Rencontre (TheMeeting). Now usually known (not without a touch of irony) as Bonjour Monsieur Courbet !, this painting was unveiled atthe 1855 Exposition Universelle and was judged by critics to be ‘the manifestation of a monstrous pride’. It depicts the leader oftherealist movement as acharacter readytoconquer theworld, his pilgrim’s staff in hand, standing before a benefactor who is out in the company of his manservant and his dog. Evocative of the Grand Tour of the Renaissance artists who crossed over the Swiss Alps into Italy, the figure ofthe pilgrim isreproduced in the exhibition in a dual form, leaning with one hand on hisstaff while with the other he hides behind his back what appears to be a dagger. This duplicity is one of many ways Valentin Carron plays with his wonted ambivalence, representing himself here as a snake moving through art history in order to commit what he calls his ‘robberies’. The snake is a recurring motif in the artist's body of work, borrowed from the typecast handicraft of the ironwork decorations on the Art Nouveau façades in Zurich. The reptile traces a line through the space that helps orientate the viewer, unless what it actually evokes is Carron’s past as a skater, ‘snaking’ his peers in order to come out in front. — Christian Alandete