Valérie Blass

A sculptor, Valérie Blass largely works with a wide variety of moldable materials, which she then covers with colour. At times abstract, at times figurative, her eclectic works refer to universes as varied as fiction or minimalism. The artist principally works with sculpture and video. Four themes encapsulate her work: the posture and the movement; affect, representation and abstraction; the primal gaze; the rapport between the form and the dressing of it. Her abstract sculptures greatly heighten movement: the tensions and torsions of the form gives them an anthropomorphic dimension, which often vies to entangle the distinctions between figurative and abstract sculpture. This impetus leads her to develop new techniques and to experiment with the limits of the materials' possibilities. "I strive to create tensions between representation and form, between the corporeality of the object and our abstract relation to the work."

Biography

Born in Montreal, Valérie Blass completed a Bachelor in Visual Arts and a Master in Visual and Media Arts at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM).

Recent exhibitions

2012	Valérie Blass, Contemporary Art Museum, Montreal
2011	Petit losange laqué veiné, Parisian Laundry, Montreal
2009	Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, Toronto
2008	La plus pure apparence, Parisian Laundry, Montreal Québec Triennal 2008, Contemporary Art Museum, Montreal