“If there exists a planet where plants move on legs, one might see the grass fleeing at the approach of a cow. … Perhaps, in the end, we live on another planet.” 

Such was the postulation of a French sculptor, François-Xavier Lalanne, whose work, alongside that of his wife and fellow sculptor, Claude Lalanne, departs the mundanity of the real world for the playfulness of the dream world. More than 150 of their creatures, furniture, and objects will be on display through November 3 at the Palazzo Rota Ivancich at Venice, which is now transformed into “another planet” — or, as the exhibit is named, Planète Lalanne.

The artistic duo, known as “Les Lalannes” since the 1960s, appear to care little about the confines of domestic life. Why not have a bath in a life-size, bright blue rendering of a hippopotamus, whose mouth functions as a sink and body as a tub (“Hippopotame I,” 1968/1971)? What better fun to do one’s work than at a desk in the shape of a sheep (“Mouflon de Pauline“)? What dreams might one have sleeping in an egg-shaped twin bed boasting a beak (“Lit Cocodoll,” 1964)?

Anyone observing the array of fantastical objects filling the grande interiors of the palazzo will wonder as such. Organized by Ben Brown Fine Arts gallery from London, the retrospective is the first exhibit of Les Lalannes to take place in Italy. It opened last week at the 60th Venice Biennale, which coincides with the centennial anniversary of the birth of surrealism marked by André Breton’s first Surrealist Manifesto.

Surrealism infects the work of Les Lalannes. Take François-Xavier Lalanne’s “Poisson Paysage,” three of which in different sizes are displayed throughout the palazzo. The fish’s body is interrupted by a rectangular cutout that, as positioned in the palazzo, funnels one’s gaze to a canal outside. The omission of figure and disregard of physics recall the trick of a magician. Or the work of a Surrealist painter, René Magritte, as in his 1966 “La Décalcomanie.”

Although the couple always insisted on being exhibited together, their styles are distinct. François-Xavier Lalanne is known for his life-size sculptures of animals, a practice inspired by his time working as a guard in the Egyptian and Assyrian galleries of Paris’s Musée du Louvre. His creatures are like characters in Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland.”

“Animals have always fascinated me, perhaps because they are the only beings through which you can come into contact with another world,” Lalanne said. “Otherwise, you always come back to the human world, which is basically your own image.”

Claude Lalanne focused on flora and fauna, brought to life in bronze through the Renaissance art of casting and rendered delicately using the technique of electroplating. Golden ginkgo leaves blossom to form a coffee table (“Table Ginkgo,” 2009). A cabbage gains the claws of a chicken (“Choupette,” 2014). A baguette walks with eight baby-sized feet (“Pain Pieds,” 1971/2006-07).

Unlike her husband, who was first a painter, Claude Lalanne skipped sketches and went straight to sculpture, carving until her desired figure presented itself. “What counts is the form,” she said, “and what it transmits to me.”

Les Lalanne crafted their sculptures from a studio they shared on the famed Impasse Ronsin of 1950s Paris. After Claude Lalanne died in 2019, collector demand for the couple’s works of whimsy and wonder reached new heights. As Planète Lalanne’s curator, Jérôme Neutres, put it in a statement, the artists are “unclassifiable.”