Valérie Blass

APEX
09.03–10.04.1998

An art of the recalcitrant, the massive, and the rugged, Valérie Blass’s work is entirely haunted by an “amoral and poetic animism.” This means that her uniquely sculptural art is shaped by the meeting and fusion of animal corporeality with geological and mineral formations. It also means that her work is permeated by the concept of magma and the allegorical properties of natural phenomena, while remaining highly attuned to the intrinsic qualities of matter. Landscape—as a repository of images (both natural and urban)—demands to be examined across every scale, perspective, and stratum, as well as through its flat surfaces, folds, and hollows. If a landscape silhouette begins to emerge, it is because a “landscape portrait” is taking shape—a process possessing an abstract power that transcends mere representation. While Blass’s work engages with the figuration of common forms and objects (sometimes magnified, sometimes reconfigured from readymades like climbing holds), it does so by highlighting the material itself as a suggestive force and a subject in its own right. Many works bear the distinct traces of their own creation. Some more recent pieces even focus on representing the act of making through references to specific crafts; a work involving casting, for instance, reveals pouring spouts that possess the same nobility as the bronze they channel into the mold. Deeply rooted in the flow of life, Blass’s art draws its forms and colors from that source, returning works that exalt and interpret it in entirely new ways.

Patrice Duhamel