Valentin Carron's small solo exhibition for Art Kabinett represents both new and familiar directions in his work. Questioning the difference between art and utility, Carron uses modernist design tropes and material displacement to create works whose stark graphics belie a succinctly intellectual approach. The decorative iron pole bisecting the space is inspired by bistro décor of the 1970s in his hometown in Switzerland. Orphaned from its suggested intentions, it is physically and mentally re-partitioned into the formalist concerns of minimalist sculpture. A pair of feet cast in glass function as vases, each holding a single lonely flower. Simultaneously absurdist and disconcerting, these amputated ligaments are turned decorative through Carron's gestural antics. On the adjacent wall, a painted canvas suggesting the entropy of time on silver is affixed with the moving hands of a clock. In an irreverent nod to the obsequious gravity of time, Carron again turns the venerated art object on its head, fashioning the most mundane of everyday objects from within art's accepted borders.
