DUCK
Inspired by the famous Long Island Big Duck, Olivier Cablat collects images matching the concept of duck, a term which, according to famous architect Robert Venturi, designates any con-struction where the form reflects its function. Thanks to the Nestlé Grant from the Grand Prix Images Vevey 2013/2014, he gathered hundreds of photographs of the 1930s duck’s spiritual heirs. Viewers discovered his “theory of evolution” inside a nearly six-meter-high replica of the original duck teleported to Vevey via vintage images found on the web. After a stopover at Rencontres d’Arles in 2015, the giant duck has since settled in the Marais du Viguerat nature reserve in Camargue (FR). The project also includes an eponymous book, an integral part of his research and co-published by Images Vevey.
DUCK
Inspired by the famous Long Island Big Duck, Olivier Cablat collects images matching the concept of duck, a term which, according to famous architect Robert Venturi, designates any con-struction where the form reflects its function. Thanks to the Nestlé Grant from the Grand Prix Images Vevey 2013/2014, he gathered hundreds of photographs of the 1930s duck’s spiritual heirs. Viewers discovered his “theory of evolution” inside a nearly six-meter-high replica of the original duck teleported to Vevey via vintage images found on the web. After a stopover at Rencontres d’Arles in 2015, the giant duck has since settled in the Marais du Viguerat nature reserve in Camargue (FR). The project also includes an eponymous book, an integral part of his research and co-published by Images Vevey.
EGYPT 3000
Olivier Cablat explores the complex bonds between today’s Egypt and its glorious historical past of pharaohs, hieroglyphs and pyramids. While in residence, he studied how these symbols were re-appropriated. Displayed at Espace Images, his project of contemporary archeology EGYPT 3000 comprises three chapters: consumer goods photographed like antique artefacts, typologies of vernacular architecture and the screening of a digital program made of one hundred images found on the Internet via the search word pyramid.
Le Stade de la Lose
Olivier Cablat is an artist who loves football and was a former hopeful for a club in the Marseille area. For his project Le Stade de la Lose, between 2015 and 2017 he went online to buy a multitude of miscellaneous items such as Panini trading cards, mascots, key rings and T-shirts. Each item conceals its own unsettling anecdote related to the history of football. We learn that the airplane-shaped ashtray commemorates the death of almost the entire Torino F.C. team in a crash in 1949, that Bernard Tapie recorded the song “Réussir sa vie” (Succeed in life) on vinyl in 1986, and that a mug stirs up memories of when Eric Cantona shockingly kicked an English fan in 1995.
This French artist thus unveils the darker side of such a popular sport.
