L’homme et l’enfant is part of a series of works Valentin Carron began in 2021, marking a return to figurative sculpture. The artist modeled small formats in polymer dough, before firing, painting and scanning them in three dimensions. He then transforms the scale and materials, from miniature to either human-scale or monumental. Even when blown up to large scale, the cast aluminum retains the imprint of the hand molding the initial material, with a fluidity which contrasts with the hardness of the material and the bold colors.
Carron explores a little developed theme in European sculpture: the figure of a man and his child, hand in hand. The artist explores ways of representing relationships with others: “For this work, I just wanted to make a child with an adult, hand in hand, an experience I have with my own children. It’s a way of talking differently about family relationships. With children, the emotional bond is different. There’s a natural love that feels natural. They’re honest, there have no boundaries.” Carron depicts these characters through simple shapes, with humor and tenderness: visible from all sides, they stand frozen in a single moment, their legs caught in the swing of their steps, their faces surprised, each of them drawn to something different, but connnected by one hand.

“I’ve made some appropriations and I’ve come a bit to the end of this system. I put some of myself into it, but there’s also something a bit fantasized about. Perhaps it’s my vision, my imagination that dominates. These sculptures with duos of characters are more about relationships. I’d already done that with animals, but this time it’s the relationship with a friend, a couple, a child. It’s about exploring how we can represent these relationships. [...]
For this work, I just wanted to make a child with an adult, hand in hand, an experience I have with my own children. It’s a way of talking about a different relationship with the family. Michel Houellebecq says something funny in Les Particules élémentaires: “There are no recomposed families, only decomposed families”. With children, the emotional bond is different. There’s a natural love that goes without saying. They’re fair, there are no barriers. And when you move the scale, something interesting happens, you look at things differently, you see everything bigger, the vulnerability, the movement, the awkwardness. I like it.”
- extract from interviews with Christian Alandete and Alix de La Chapelle on the occasion of the exhibition “Bonjour Serpent”, Mennour, Paris - 2022