Valérie Blass turns everyday matter into an exposure of the psychic drift of our times. By building a hybridity into the things she fabricates, she causes us to question our perception of what is there. Deux assemblages crédibles à partir de mon environnement immédiat (2007), shown in the first Quebec Triennial at Montreal’s Musée d’art contemporain, uses a filing cabinet turned on its side. Atop that structure is an angular wooden shape (made of faux-wood floor covering) that could pass for a Modernist work from the 1960s. Adjacent to it is another abstruse object, this one made of construction materials, fragments of figurines, and knick-knacks. We question whether these forms have any precise relation to a context. Blass’s games work invisibly as well, for she may fuse more than one material into a structure or sculpture.
