Valérie Delarue

NEWS

A graduate of the École des Beaux-Arts de Paris, where she studied in the studio of Georges Jeanclos, Valérie Delarue also continued her artistic training in the United States, in Oakland, in the studio of Viola Frey.

After developing photographic projects and video performances centered on the themes of hair and dance, Valérie Delarue returned to sculpture through ceramics, a medium she practices with great virtuosity. Her intimate knowledge of the technical subtleties of ceramics has enabled her to embrace two approaches that have become fundamental to her work: the energy of the body leaving its imprint in the clay, and the gestures of creation understood as a bodily confrontation—almost choreographic—with the material. These approaches function as metaphors for vital energy, as well as for a form of personal liberation in which sensuality plays an essential role.

Her work explores a deeply organic relationship with clay, perceived both as an extension of the body and as a territory to be traversed. Sculpture thus becomes landscape, where living forms, anatomical reminiscences, and mineral structures intertwine.

“All of Valérie Delarue’s art consists in resolving conflicting forces into a harmonious whole. Alongside her ceramic sculpture, she renews a meaningful dialogue with drawing, and through her dazzling mastery of pastel she brings forth the dawn of a reconciled world, where the human and the mineral ultimately seem able to come together in a single, indistinct unity.”

— Frédéric Bodet, Collection Curator, Art Critic, Exhibition Curator