Stéphane Ducret (Swiss, 1970) is graduated from the Ecole Supérieure d'Art Visuel in Geneva. After spending extensive periods of time in New York, Buenos Aires and Porto, he currently lives and works in Geneva. 

In 2017, after going through a long creative crisis during which he refrains from painting and exhibiting, Ducret renews his artistic practice and starts his series entitled REAL ESTATE whereby he appropriates and recomposes contemporary masterpieces by placing them, disconnected from their original context, in imaginary settings in which he creates new narratives.

To date, the REAL ESTATE series is composed of 10 paintings on canvas, all measuring 208 x 188 cm (81 ⅞ x 74 in.). The titles quote the names of the authors of the 'borrowed' works, along with the hashtag symbol, as if they were notifications on social networks. As for the title of the series, it refers to real estate but also to the ‘Estate of the Artist’, a term universally used by the art world to designate the heritage of the artist. 

While questioning the relationship between reality and imagination, between knowledge and recognition, Ducret explores the role and status of the artist as well as his relationship to the art market. By embodying the audience, the collector and the art maker at the same time, he sets up a kind of multi-sided imaginary dialogue in which he takes up and develops the discourse of the artists he quotes. The selection of these ‘subjects’ corresponds to a perfectly assumed strategic reflection in which meanings and questions intertwine and confront each other both in content and in formal research.

Laura Gowen

Solo Show Number 1 (March 12th - April 24th, 2021), will be the first exhibition of Ducret’s REAL ESTATE series coinciding with his first solo exhibition at Gowen Contemporary Gallery.