Patrick Raynaud creates films and sculptures, taking seemingly mundane objects—from active machines such as wind turbines or roundabouts to static crates and mannequins, and transforming them into playfully provocative sculptures.

Since the 1980s, crates have been a central element of Raynaud’s work. Crates—both ubiquitous and overlooked objects within the contemporary art market—allow art to be shipped and moved at a global scale. Raynaud’s sculptures explore the conditions of the commercial art ecosystem by transforming these mobile units into art objects themselves. He frequently adorns crates and containers with photographic reproductions of art historical masterworks, investigating the circulation of high-value works such as Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa (1503). Other works by Raynaud reimagine institutionally and commercially sacred artworks, Claude Monet’s Water Lilies (1897-99) or Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers (1888-89), in the form of light boxes or postcards—a form of appropriation that questions the difference between original and copy and democratizes the consumption of these iconic images.

For Luna Luna, Raynaud designed a demented cityscape comprising a series of contorted and precariously balanced architectural and geometric forms. Homes are stacked and flipped upside down, stairs lead to nowhere, and shapes are illuminated from within by ghostly interior lights. Raynaud makes these otherwise innocuous forms and architectures uncanny, crafting a whimsical dystopia with his gravity-defying installation.