Oliver Cablat: “Story of the teleported DUCK” – Theory of Evolution

Oliver Cablat Born in 1978, Marignane, France. Oliver Cablat lives and works in Arles, France. After university studies in art, ethnology and photography (1996-2003), Olivier Cablat worked as a photographer for the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in Karnak, Egypt. Since 2005 he has elaborated his practice in different fields : artist, photographer, publisher and founder of Galerie 2600, teacher, searcher and Artistic Director of Cosmos Arles Books, together with Sebastian Hau.

France –

In 1930, duck farmer Martin Maurer had a duck-shaped building constructed to house his retail poultry shop in Flanders, a small town on Long Island, New York.

In 1972, Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour wrote Learning from Las Vegas, a book in which they examined the concepts of vernacular, functional and commercial architecture. They identified two main kinds of buildings: the ‘Decorated Shed’ and the ‘Duck’. Directly referring to the Flanders’s building, a Duck is an architecture taking a form which fully expresses its functional or commercial content.

In 2014, Olivier Cablat reactivated the Venturi’s concept by compiling archives made up of his own photographs, digitalised publications and pictures from the Internet. Those digital archives are the basis of ‘DUCK, A Theory of Evolution’, a genealogical study of the Duck and its evolution towards mobile forms that have more or less strayed from the original concept.


The project is also a reflection on the relationship between a work and the forms it can take. And the most significant of the forms taken by the project is a construction made solely from images and informations collected on the Internet. By covering all the angle of the original building, 10 touristic found pictures were used to re-create the previously unrealized plan of the building.

Then it was possible to create a teleported version of the DUCK, 81% size of the original building, only with a few dust of material found on the internet.


Art & Culture Feature- Oliver Cablat‘s DUCK was published by RVB Books, Paris.

Related Posts

Phurba Namgay : Dragons and Rockets

Bhutan – Bhutanese ‘‘thangka’’ painter Phurba Namgay has developed a cutting edge new style of Bhutanese art: a fusion of classical ...

Amber Nolan : Airplane Hitchhiker

U.S.A. – Amber Nolan has taken the well-known form of wandering, hitchhiking, to a whole new environment: the air. By ...

#High #Higher #SUPERHIGH!

Germany –  Arte co-production explores nine ways to get high without drugs German artist duo Boris Eldagsen and Sabine Taeubner ...

Alex Chacon: ‘My entire life was on the bike with me’

Alex Chacon was ready to pursue a career in medicine before he discovered the joy of motorcycling around the world. ...

Vincent Urban : The Great Land Rover Ramble

Germany – If you have ever wondered what it’s like to pack everything into a Land Rover and drive around ...

Jimmy Chin : Into the Great Wide Open

U.S.A. – Initially, Jimmy Chin saw photography as a way to continue a lavish lifestyle on the road, bouncing from ...

The Mad Hatter – Philip Smiley

England- London based artist, Philip Smiley did his MA in Fine Arts at the School of Visual Arts, New York. ...

Jeffrey Milstein : Heavy Metal Giants

U.S.A. – For as long as he can remember, Jeffrey Milstein has loved everything associated with aviation. As he grew up, ...

Alyssa Monk’s Photo-Realistic Paintings

USA –  Monks‘s paintings have been the subject of numerous solo and group exhibitions including “Intimacy” at the Kunst Museum ...