| Valérie Blass | |
| Birth Place: | Montreal, Quebec |
| Field: | sculptor |
| Training: | Université du Québec à Montréal |
| Awards: | Gershon Iskowitz Prize, 2017 |
Valérie Blass (born 1967) is a Canadian artist working primarily in sculpture. She lives and works in her hometown of Montreal, Quebec, and is represented by Catriona Jeffries,[1] in Vancouver. She received both her Bachelor of Fine Arts and Master of Fine Arts, specializing in visual and media arts, from the Université du Québec à Montréal. She employs a variety of sculptural techniques, including casting, carving, moulding, and bricolage to create strange and playful arrangements of both found and constructed objects.[2]
In a 2011 article in the Canadian magazine The Walrus, her practice of sculptural assemblage was compared to artists such as Marcel Duchamp and Louise Bourgeois.[3] Her work has been collected by the National Gallery of Canada, Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, the Royal Bank of Canada, and several other private collections.
Blass relies on the process of collage in her works, focusing on materials that have a relationship either formally or conceptually to bring new meaning out of the objects through their correlation.
Doubling in Blass’ practice diverts the viewer’s attention from the object as it is to the relationships it has with a similar object. Blass distorts the second sculpture using a myriad of approaches; One of the approaches that is used in Blass’s doubling is using the same texture for two sculptures and creating a figurative and abstract relationship.
“The double turns up repeatedly in my work: the idea of two things with the same shape and the same motif and then a different shape with the same motif. My motivation is about wanting to use material over which I don’t have too much control, but material that will give me some object and some shape”[4]
Blass’s practice challenges the idea of a complete “form.” She approaches to the challenge through purposely deconstruct, then reconstruct and reconfigure in an unexpected way. She states that she does not think in advance and is open to contingency that occurs during the process.[5]
2019
2015
2014
2013
Galeri Manâ, Istanbul, Turkey
Illingworth Kerr Gallery, Alberta College of Art and Design, Calgary, Canada
La Chambre Blanche, Quebec City, Canada
2012
2011
2009
Blass' work has been presented in several notable group exhibitions, including the inaugural Québec Triennial at the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal in 2008,[11] Nothing to Declare: Current Sculpture from Canada at The Power Plant in Toronto in 2009,[12] Oh, Canada, a major survey of contemporary Canadian Art at MASS MoCA in 2012.[13] and It is What it Is, an exhibition featuring recent acquisitions of contemporary Canadian Art at the National Gallery of Canada in 2010/2011.[14]
In 2015, Blass presented new sculptural work featuring sculptural busts, distorted mirrors, and casts of human limbs in an exhibition titled My Life at Artspeak,[15] Vancouver before travelling to the commercial gallery Daniel Faria,[16] Toronto.