Philippe Caron Lefebvre's sculptures combine natural forms with eerie, sci-fi finishes

Step inside Philippe's studio in episode eight of The Re-Education of Eddy Rogo, new digital original series from CBC Arts.

Name: Philippe Caron Lefebvre
Born: Saint-Sauveur, Que., 1986
Lives and works: Montreal

His work: Inspired equally by nature, particularly plant life, and science fiction, Philippe Caron Lefebvre creates otherworldly works out of a huge variety of materials including wood, wax, ceramics and various sorts of foam. He says he was drawn to that last material because it was so easy to find: "In the street, I could find packaging foam, leftover insulation material from construction sites, and it's a material that is so light and you can easily carve," he says. "I also found spray foam. Spray foam and polystyrene are really compatible, and I can carve everything up and it becomes one material I can work with."

The king of fruit: To make the sculpture Parade, Caron Lefebvre first started by making a mold of a durian fruit, then spray painting the resulting sculpture from one side only. The result looks like some kind of sci-fi monster from one side and a dusty relic from the other. "I did some research, and in parts of Asia they call it 'the king of fruit,'" he said. "And that kind of struck me, like why would durian fruit be the king of fruit? Why would a big fruit covered in spikes be called king of fruit? And I began thinking in a fictional way, maybe there is a hierarchy of fruit? Maybe that's reflected in form. Like this could be the highest in the hierarchy of fruit form."

The downside of styrofoam: Caron Lefebvre's favourite material is not without its drawbacks. A major one is durability. "It's fragile," he says. "To expand the lifespan of this material, you have to add something, fibreglass resin or plaster or try to find ways to use it as a structure or background material."

He also acknowledges that the easy availability that appealed to him so much in the first  place has its own problems. "It's almost like a hoarder problem now," he says. "I gather so many pieces of Styrofoam that they're just laying around and taking up space while I figure out a way to do something with them."

On sci-fi: While some pieces, like the durian, bring to mind classic horror science ficton like the Alien films, Caron Lefebvre tries to draw from the broadest possible definition of the genre: "I would say [my influences are] a melting pot of many things," he says. "Yes, exotic plants. Yes, trees that have these weird shapes, coral and these elements of nature, but also the collective memory of science fiction. And that's many things. For some people it's Star Wars, for some it's horror movies, for some it's dystopian literature like 1984. The source of inspiration comes from these notions."