Catriona Jeffries

For Valérie Blass, things are not what they seem. Bodies become clothes, become costume, become prop, become photograph, become projection, become painting, become shadow, become sculpture. Through material and formal experiment, her previous work collaged the figure and abstract form, shapeshifting the weight of their respective histories. In this new body of work she continues to push this into a complex, intimate space between the photographic image and sculpture.

Here, mediums adjust to each other when they meet. Bodies deform to an object. A form is determined by a photograph. The image has become paint on a sculpture. A sculpture’s surface is covered in photographic emulsion and exposed. Background and foreground change dimension. In To only ever say one thing forever the same thing we become implicated in the experience of looking, our bodies persuaded to adjust to both the photograph and sculpture together. For Blass, the image is not enough.

Valérie Blass lives and works in Montreal, QC and holds an MFA in visual and media arts from Université du Québec. To only ever say one thing forever the same thing is her first exhibition with the gallery. She has had recent solo exhibitions at Artspeak, Vancouver; The Hole, New York and the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal and group exhibitions in Los Angeles, Toronto, Montreal, New York, and Berlin.

Documentation by SITE Photography.