Stéphane Ducret

Stéphane Ducret’s recompositions of contemporary master artworks in peculiar environments lead to a new situation, a new meaning or set of meanings, for a familiar image. His distinctive visual idiom interweaves personal recollections and found imagery with references to art history in compositions that unfold into complex narratives. Ducret is less interested in rendering identifiable, real scenes than in the interplay of representational and compositional elements that, weaving between reality and imagination, meld different layers of perception and recollection.

Ducret’s work addresses post-modern issues. Reality, knowledge, and value are constantly discussed in his work. He thoroughly analyses the questions the master artworks raise and composes a new story connected with the locations where he eventually includes them. In their new environment, their meanings and issues merge with, or confront what surrounds them, both in terms of form and context

Stéphane Ducret is a Swiss Visual Artist, born in 1970 in Lausanne, Switzerland. He was Silvie Defraoui’s, Gilles Porret’s and Christian Marclay’s pupil. He holds a Master in Art and Art History from the Ecole Supérieure d’Art Visuel de Genève (now renamed HEAD) and was awarded in 2003 by the Leenaards Fondation. He now lives and works in Geneva after having lived in New York, Porto and Buenos Aires.

His work has been exhibited at The Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York; Forum d’Art Contemporain, Sierre; Fondation de l’Hermitage, Lausanne; Centro Cultural Borges, Buenos Aires; Centre PasquArt, Bienne; Musée cantonal des beaux-arts, Lausanne; The Artists Space, New York and his artworks are part of the collections BCV ART, CICG, AXA Assurances, Fonds cantonal d’art de Genève, Fonds des arts plastiques de Lausanne, Hôpital universitaire de Genève, Musée de Pully among others.

In 2016, after a creation break, he renewed his art practice into two interconnecting disciplines: 

« ART CLASSE par Stéphane Ducret » 

ART CLASSE is a practice for the transmission of knowledge, where Stéphane Ducret proposes various learning activities about Post War and contemporary  art, one of them being the emblematic « atelier REAL/FAKE » where he teaches students of any age how to paint with the techniques of preeminent contemporary artists.

Stéphane Ducret Studio: The REAL ESTATE series

Paintings, Personal References and Metaphors: A recomposition of contemporary masters’s artworks placed in private homes lead to a new situation, a new meaning or set of meanings, for a familiar image. Reality, knowledge, and value are constantly discussed in this work.