Galleries & art shows

Christopher Churcher, REDSEA Gallery (February 2020)

Art has a power unlike other human endeavours – it has the ability to produce a variety of human emotions which no other enterprise can. The observer may : laugh out loud, be moved to tears, be comforted by the familiarity of what they see, challenged by what it suggests, or confused by the artist’s intentions. Art takes many forms, yet the power remains.

Our emotions do not exist in the physical world like a tree or a rock. Art is the starting point which enables people to explore their emotions. Art and emotions have a symbiotic relationship. The act of producing art comes from an artist’s own desire to exploit their physical need to create and to enhance their emotional wellbeing which occurs when they delve into the creative process.

We connect to art in different ways. No matter how it affects us, we experience its influence. The strongest emotional responses I have witnessed have been through the work of Valérie Goutard. Never have I known an artist’s work which could evoke, so powerfully, an inner feeling with lasting impact. Val possessed an ability to create works which, on the one hand, reflected her life experiences but on the other, allowed us to find our own meaning. I have experienced this time over; I have seen viewers moved and I have been moved.

Val always maintained, better for us to have our own interpretation of her work rather than have her story be told. Her desire was for us to form our own connection with her work. Val gave us this opportunity to feel for ourselves. That was Val. Her inner feeling became ours; it was her sixth sense. [ + ]

Val, a legacy at Alliance Française de Singapour & REDSEA Gallery in 2023

Held concomitantly at Alliance Française de Singapour and REDSEA Gallery, from 12 October 2023 to 10 January 2024, Val, A Legacy, part of the French Excellence Program, is a retrospective on the late artist of international renown, Valérie Goutard.

Self-taught and instinctive artist, Val’s sculptures depict her love for freedom, cutting one by one her material, sentimental or cultural attachments that prevented her from fully living her desire to create.

Genuinely sensitive, magnificently imbalanced, and embedded with her inner light, her work was an attempt at unearthing human relationships towards themselves and their space through plains and voids intertwined et from strong visual rhythm.

A true citizen of the world who lived in Europe, Africa, and South America, she settled in Bangkok in 2004 to open her studio among the bronze casters of Ayutthaya. Meeting her husband Frédéric Morel gave her the strength to put herself at risk and perpetually renew her art. She later explored the ways of the glass masters of Murano to broaden her perspective on the illusion, the unseen, the sacred. The grief of her loss was all the more heartfelt considering how fast she evolved to the rank of the greatest.

The unicity of her artistry and the international reach of her name sparked this retrospective which displays some of her most famous masterpieces on two different sites: here at Alliance Française and at the REDSEA Gallery. You are invited to roam between the metal lines of Val to retrace the story of her exceptionally creative career and grasp the reasons behind the unanimous acclaim for her work – a legacy set in bronze and glass.

After many solo exhibitions held all through Asia (China, Taiwan, Korea, Singapore, India, Thailand, …) as well as in France, the UK, Belgium, USA, … VAL’s international reputation took off when she participated in Shanghai Art Fair in 2010 and in the Jing’An International Sculpture Park Project with the presentation of her first monumental sculpture entitled Urban life. In the years that followed this critically acclaimed performance, she had numerous exhibitions and public installations and created sculptures that are the very signature of her creative and sculptural vision. [ + ]

Val, a legacy at Alliance Française de Singapour & REDSEA Gallery in 2023

Val, a legacy at Alliance Française de Singapour & REDSEA Gallery in 2023

Exhibition “Inéquilibre” – Text by Pascal Gabert (May 2022)

I was honoured to present for the first time to the Parisian public the work of the French sculptor Valérie Goutard, known as Val, who has enjoyed great success in Asia during her career. The sculptures on display showed the evolution of her work and the creative thread that she unwound artwork after artwork, creating through each one a notion of wandering, of freedom, of movement, of fragility, of humanity, allowing her sculptures to be deeply alive. Val had the ability to create sculptures that were constantly evolving, changing with the seasons, the wind, the light, giving them a haunting and intangible dimension.

The exhibition was a real success and generated a lot of interest from the public. I was able to witness the emotion of the visitors in front of the poetry of her sculptures and the immediate proximity created between the observer and the work, of their surprise in front of the lightness of her line contrasting with the density of the bronze and of their comfort in front of the familiar aspect of the emotions that she lets transpire in each of her sculptures.

“Inéquilibre” at Galerie Pascal Gabert in March 2022

“Inéquilibre” at Galerie Pascal Gabert in March 2022

Philippe Staib, Philippe Staib Gallery (February 2020)

One Angel has been visiting the world of Art (1967-2016) and has dialogued with our souls.

VAL

Val is a unique phenomena in the world of Art : Since ten years now every time her work is exhibited people who do not know her are stopping ,spending time looking at her creations and feeling inside them that this artist is speaking to them.

Never has any living artist generated such a spontaneous consensus from the first look. We are in front of her creation and we feel we have something in us relating to what we see. We want to know more and while we speak we understand that Val is in fact speaking with our souls. What we see is a precise moment of our lives and our feelings, which we enjoy to remember. Newborn child is a moment of deep happiness which we have not enjoyed enough for us or for family and close friends and she reminds us of the exceptionality of this moment as well as all the expectations from the new parents. Agora is one of the facts of life where on public space we cross people
And we are alone (how happy should be people living in a small community who going out cross smiling face they know) and Inle Balance is the wonderful balance of life we enjoy in the middle of this very agitated world. Nothing more impressive that this figure so well balanced representing the feeling of eternity VAL found on the Inle lake with the boatman guiding the boat with its foot while he is looking at the horizon peacefully. We need this in our daily life: serenity (positive expectations) and this exceptional creation invite us to grow all difficulties of life for a peaceful feeling. [ + ]

French sculptor Val - Valérie Goutard - with Wellington Gallery with Sculptureval

“Tenth eonian initiative” at Wellington Gallery in November 2019

John Truong, Wellington Gallery (July 2018)

Wellington Gallery had the good fortune and great joy to work with Val over many years. In all her works, her hands and mind worked in unison to create or provoke a feeling or emotion in the eye of the beholder.

A recurring theme was a solitary figure or group of individuals placed within a minimalist urban landscape.  Stripped down to bare essentials, these deceptively simple works convey a universe of such immense emotional depth and complexity, it can be almost overwhelming.

She was gifted with the rare ability to capture, in a fleeting moment of time, the essence of emotions such as love, loneliness, desire, despair and joy. It is a paradox that her sculptures somehow convey both movement and stillness at the same time.

Her vivid expression of the human condition came from a creative impulse that could not be denied. She was driven by a desire to communicate with others through her art.

In conversations with her, there was always a sense of an artist for whom not the briefest moment of time should be wasted – she worked on at least four to five pieces at the same time :

“For me, work is a regular life.  I want to be able to wake up in the morning and just go…the sculpture is there or I leave it for some time in a corner.  It could be weeks or months before I get back to it.  While I’m working on other things, quite often, suddenly a solution presents itself and I stop what I’m doing and return to it and it is done.” [ + ]

S.A.C. Gallery by Linjie Zhou (February 2021)

The counter to life is the void that replaces it, as death comes to frame and define what life is. The presence of mortality is that which gives everything meaning in our destiny, being integral in the “great adventure in the making”. Thus, begins the ideas of Franco-Chinese poet and academic, François Cheng, in his 2013 essay on life’s exit entitled “Five Meditations on death : in other words . . . on life”.

This essay was cited to be the later inspiration of adored international artist, Valérie Goutard (Val) drawing a strong connection to her work’s humanist perspective. SAC gallery presents a retrospective exhibition in memorial of the late artist Val and the legacy of her artwork. This collection highlights the essence of Val’s life and career through a curated selection of her works from 2007-2016.[ + ]

S.A.C.-(Reflection-of-Infinity)

“The Reflection of Infinity” at S.A.C. Gallery by Linjie Zhou in February 2021