The sculptures of Valérie Blass operate in the realm of the double, trafficking in formal and perceptual inversions, misdirections and discontinuities. Taking shape across a broad range of techniques and mediums—from moulding and casting to assemblage and bricolage—Blass' practice is rooted in a commitment to the unexpected, bridging the figurative and the abstract to reconfigure our understanding of how a given object, image or material can or should perform.
In The Mime, the Model and the Dupe, the Montreal-based artist brings together a selection of works from the past ten years, a period in which she deepened her engagement with images, gestures and forms related to the body. Drawing on touchstones that extend from art history to the Internet, the works on view highlight the generative, often multiplicitous nature of Blass' sculptural vernacular, grounded as readily in the idiosyncratic and illusory as the traditional and representational.
