Through the lens of sculpture, Canadian artist Valérie Blass explores the tensions between form, figure, materials and art historical tropes. She often uses everyday objects and industrial materials, such as fractured figures and shattered artifacts, as a starting point to organically explore voids and absences in both natural history and art history.
Blass reimagines and reinvents the present by borrowing from different sources, such as hunting supply catalogues or discount stores. In turn, the artist creates new worlds by observing and reintroducing the details of time and space.
Blass has a vision of a curious present: a place where seemingly stoic objects become alert sentinels, spent warriors, princesses and other mystical figures. She remains loyal to a sculptural tradition in her new versions of icons and figures. Using a variety of color, pattern, texture and scale, Blass fuses these elements together in the suggestion of an alternate reality – one that opposes sameness.
Blass holds an MFA in visual and media arts from Université du Québec à Montréal. She has had solo institutional exhibitions in Montréal, Québec City, Toronto and Calgary. Blass’ work is found in the collections of The National Gallery of Canada, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, the Musée national des beaux arts du Québec, The Royal Bank of Canada, the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec and innumerable corporate and private collections throughout Canada, the United States and Europe.
Images courtesy of Valérie Blass
