Garance vallée
An open mind
September 2021
Interviews with open minded creative people who, like Olivier Garcé & Clio Dimofski, resonate the same passion for collectible design, art and narrative places that defines them.
Next in our interview series, we speak to artist Garance Vallée. She lives and works in Paris. Inspired by the straight line, she transforms the angles, plays with the perspectives and imagines curious spaces.
What is your background?
I graduated with a Master’s degree in architecture with a specialization in scenography to work on smaller- scaled architecture in 2017. I grew up in the painting studio of my father KRIKI, between paintings and punk music. Throughout my entire childhood I continuously sketched and created objects on the floor of my Dad’s studio in Paris.
What inspires you?
The Human being. My closest connection is with the human and rebuilding the connection of consciousness for the human being, which is sometimes forgotten in our dehumanized society.
You are an artist-designer working across architecture, sculpture, scenography, furniture design. What is the main thread that runs throughout your practice?
I don't believe that there is a single technique for every idea. For me, experimentation is primary. The inner connectivity in the process is essential. For example, if I show my drawings as finished works, they somehow trigger the beginning of another project. I am simultaneously drawing and building the space in my mind.
What book is on your bedside table?
The Poetics of Space « La Poétique de l’Espace" is a 1958 book by the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard.
How do you define your relation to ceramic?
I like the fact that it is a living material, that it has to be modeled, and the relationship that it establishes with the body and the hands of the creator. When you work with ceramics, it's a dialogue between two organic bodies, I like to feel the materials, to model, to have a real contact with the textures I use.
Are you still learning? How do you learn?
Of course I am still learning everyday ! I often use a Socrate’s quote « All I know is that I know nothing ».
Garance Vallée, embodies a creative youth, with an uninhibited eclecticism. Graduated in architecture in 2017 in Paris, she emancipated herself to propose a global universe between sculpture, architecture, painting, and design.
In 2018, she worked in an architecture agency called Lot-Ek in New York. A decisive meeting that pushes her to go solo and formulate her own stylistic vocabulary, whatever the medium. It was during the last Design Week in Milan 2018 that Garance was discovered, during a carte blanche given to her by Milanese press secretary Martina Gamboni. She had designed a living room where she celebrated the matter of the Mother Earth through an organic decoration with mineral texture and shapes.
She creates a multiform personal universe with modernist influences, and objects with hybrid use, sometimes abstract, sometimes formal, to which she confers a strong architectural dimension. Which are characteristic of the designer’s artistic identity.
