Maxime Chevalier

Invocation of the figure of the stray dog – perro callejero in Spanish – a dog that roams the streets freely. While the title seems absurd, it echoes the catalogue of sculptural gestures that make up the installation, giving the impression of a tragicomic piece.
Each sculpture is born from a back-and-forth between the street and the studio. Wood, metal, books, furniture, internet-sourced videos, cardboard, and electrical cables are collected: the waste of capitalism, familiar forms, disenchanted objects. The material bends to the will of imagination: from old pieces of wood, I draw a boat, a traffic cone becomes an amphora – further on, a stuffed toy is transformed into a Greek god.
Materials sometimes pile up to create balancing totems. Fragments of bodies emerge, cast in the very materials meant to contain them – they freeze, or rather, sheath themselves and rise again as an imitation of classical sculpture.
The volumes, born from assembly, wood carving, and casting, come together into a set of forms that celebrate life, the city, and the creatures that inhabit it.