Text of Val about her new Bangkok studio (May 2013)
These two open house days celebrate ten years of hard work, ten years of intense life, ten years of continuous learning, marked by joys, sorrows, difficulties, encouragements, doubts but still carried by the deep conviction to be where I should in this exploration and personal adventure, daring to follow my own direction freely.
My workspace is usually jealously protected, a space of inner concentration, of physical work, of reflection, of effort. To create, I listen, I look, I take time, I feel every move, I move slowly and surely according to the rhythm I feel. The workshop, this protected space sheltered from the roughness of the outside world, is essential for me to make buried emotions vibrate and resonate and to tame them with my hands.
Only the constraints of rigorous and regular work allow me to reach the necessary concentration to identify and capture all the images that arise, these elusive sensations, these snapshots I will try to transform into sculpture. [ + ]
It seemed important for me to share this anniversary and this inauguration by opening my universe of creation, not only to collectors, but more broadly, to share my passion, to show the work of my team, to share all the necessary steps to move from the creation in wax to an actualized bronze piece. It felt important to share all the complexities of a process, which tracks the meanderings of my creations where fullness and emptiness dialogue together endlessly. If we realize the fullness in bronze, emptiness brings all the complexity of the creation of the sculpture. The emptiness forces us to think, to break down, to cut, to measure in order to achieve and then to reconstruct, to assemble, to find this energizing balance between fullness and emptiness.
This ten-year anniversary coincides very happily with the opening of the new workshop, and as such can be seen as recognition of the path travelled auguring in the as yet undiscovered one. This space, thought about and imagined with Frédéric, is the crucible of my creations to come, it is also the cultural space that we want to animate with the other artists Frédéric supports.
This workshop is a space to create and space to exhibit, it is a space for composing and a space to watch, it is a space of spontaneity, of free imagination, of resourcefulness, of accomplishment.
For the first exhibition, the choice of how to show the works of art has imposed itself: It had to display what we do every day, to use the available elements, leave space to chance, look for pieces of wood, remains of resin casts, planks, scrap, stands, the framework of my earlier pieces, wooden crates for shipping, parts previously used for other purposes, to assemble and then seek, as I do with my broken pieces of bronze, a balance between my sculptures and these spontaneous pedestals which carry with them the natural patina of the workshop.
Welcome to the studio-gallery of Sculptureval.
