Press Release
Alliance Française de Singapour invites visitors to a retrospective on internationally praised sculptor Valérie Goutard, also known as Val
Bangkok, 30 October 2023 — Held concomitantly at Alliance Française de Singapour and REDSEA Gallery, from today to 18 November, Val, A Legacy, part of the French Excellence programme, 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.
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.
About the artist:
After many solo exhibitions held all through Asia (Bangkok, Hong Kong, Korea…) as well as in France, the UK, Belgium… 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.
In 2016, the Chinese Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing (CAFA) paid her a rare tribute for a Western artist by organising a retrospective exhibition of her work. She and her husband then achieved the feat of installing Ocean Utopia on the seabed of Koh Tao in Thailand, a few months before her tragic death in Thailand in October 2016. This sculptural ensemble aims at the re-establishment of extinct coral reefs which constitute the third medium of this artwork.
Recently, in 2022, her artworks were featured in an institutional exhibition part of the off exhibition of Venice Art Biennale.
She is considered one of the “10 French Sculptors You Should Know About”: https://blog.artsper.com/en/get-inspired/10-french-sculptors-you-should-know-about/
About Alliance Française de Singapour
A local non-profit educational and cultural organisation, Alliance Française de Singapour’s mission is to offer unique opportunities to all public to expand their linguistic and cultural consciousness by offering French classes using innovative state-of-the art methodology and material as well as programming artistic events in all disciplines that promote the richness and diversity of cultures from the French-speaking world and beyond. Alliance Française de Singapour was founded in 1949 and is affiliated to the international network of Alliance Française, which spans over 800 locations in 132 countries. The organisation has hosted many successful programmes to date, each celebrating different aspects of French Excellence, including Notre-Dame with its exhibition, (Re)births, centered around the emblematic monument; DANCE, spotlighting revolutionary dancer Rudolf Nureyev; and À TABLE !, which sparked conversations about the art of French fine dining.
About REDSEA Gallery
Founded in 2001, REDSEA Gallery is one of Singapore’s leading contemporary art galleries, located within the charming enclaves of Dempsey Hill. In 2020 – the year of publication of the artist’s posthumous catalogue raisonné -, REDSEA Gallery hosted a retrospective of VAL’s work.
Website: https://www.redseagallery.com/ Facebook: @redseagallery Instagram: @redseagallery LinkedIn: REDSEA Gallery
Released by TQPR Thailand on behalf of Sculpture Val, in association with Alliance Française de Singapour and REDSEA Gallery
######
For Media Inquery Please contact:
TQPR THAILAND
Tom Van Blarcom, tom@tqpr.com
Nuie Titichayapon, nuie@tqpr.com, +662 260 5820