Lot
32
Comment se diriger
Plastic, papier mâché, paint, underpadding, styrofoam, 2006
Deux éléments : 60 x 15 x 73,5 cm & 272 x 25,5 x 25,5 cm
Comment se diriger was produced in 2006. This piece is part of an ongoing investigation in my work that leads me to design objects where motif and covering interact in interesting ways with the form. The large piece in this sculpture was made of thermoformable plastic, which I was using for the first time. I painted shadings and drew pencil lines onto the plastic which I then stretched over the form. Employing a variety of materials and techniques, I continue to explore the idea of a drawing or motif deformed by the form itself.
Biographical note
Valérie Blass holds a BFA and an MFA in visual and media arts from Université du Québec à Montréal. Her practice addresses the history of sculpture while introducing new icons and figures. Hers is a personal lexicon that she uses over and over again to explore the duality of matter—sameness and differences, repetition of colours and textures, scale—which becomes the landscape of an actual world. Her work relies on the responses of an inspired audience. In her work, the immediate present and the near future are reinvented through unusual processes that generate wonderful iconic hybrids.
Blass was an guest artist in the inaugural Quebec Triennial at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal. The Museum subsequently acquired one of her sculptures for its permanent collection. She has had solo shows at Galerie Circa, Galerie B312, Dare-Dare in Montreal, at Galerie Foreman in Sherbrooke, at L’Œil de poisson in Quebec City, at the Museum of Canadian Contemporary Art in Toronto, as well as group shows at Galerie de l’UQAM, Galerie Clark and Blackwood Gallery.
Her work is also found in the Collection de prêt d’œuvres d’art of the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, the Royal Bank of Canada, the National Gallery of Canada, and in private collections.