Sculpture Val

Val

Val

More about Val
Introduction by Val
Introduction by Patricia Byrs-Lasquier
Comments of Philippe Staib

Biography

VAL, a French artist, lived a nomadic childhood, shuttling between South America and Africa .
Living between Paris and Bangkok since 2004, VAL seems to have found true freedom in Asia , and this way of life in particular has given her wings.
For ten years, she was an urban professional, working in marketing while she had a fortuitous encounter that would change the course of her life forever.

The encounter was with clay, and it occurred at the home of an artist-friend who wanted to show Val, then around 30, a different way of life. The experience was such a revelation that the overwhelming passion she felt then has yet to subside. She literally returned to the earth, her arms buried in clay up the elbows, in touch with her senses becoming one with her material.

Self-taught and instinctual, she spent two years studying in Paris with an artist named Yann Kintgen. During this time, she gained confidence in what her hands and mind could produce.
Val insists that she does not regret any technical or cultural shortcomings. Instead, she credits them with giving her creative freedom.

This powerful impulse asserted itself the first few times she worked the clay as well as the desire to prolong the pleasure of creating forms out of nothing gradually drove her to cut all the ties that restrained her. VAL is fond of freedom. She has severed one by one the material, emotional and cultural bonds that prevent her from giving full expression to her need to create.

It took Val only two years to become independent and make a living out of her art.
She first made a name for herself in April 2004, at a joint exhibition in Bangkok, and since 2005, her works have been on permanent display in Bangkok, then Hong Kong in 2006, Singapore and France in 2008 and then China in 2009. After several solo exhibitions in all those countries in 2010 and her noticed participation to the Shanghai Art Fair 2010 and at the Jing’An International Sculpture Project with the presentation of Urban Life monumental piece of art, VAL has now become a renowned sculptor in Asia and in Europe as well.