His Flower (Belly)
Made up of various images and materials, this work by Valerie Snobeck is organized in layers that reveal themselves one after the other. The flower photograph is from the Documerica project commissioned by the US Environmental Protection Agency and published in 1957 in the book The Scallop: Studies of a Shell and its Influences on Humankind by Eight Authors. The image is reproduced on plastic film with the film peeled off the backing. The artist then affixed it to a mirror from which the metals were removed by means of acids, scraping, incisions, and rubbing. She coloured the wooden frame with a permanent black marker, then covered these elements with protective netting recovered from a construction site. Drawn from various sources, the materials, whether natural or artificial, ephemeral or durable, are each deconstructed in turn. The creative process is revealed in all its opacity and translucence. Valerie Snobeck thus endeavours to “depict in order to paint”: she uses images of nature exploited by the Shell Oil company, integrates waste and multiple shimmering effects in a clever play of references between ecology and economy.
Text written by Franny Tachon as part of the partnership between the École du Louvre and Lafayette Anticipations – Fonds de dotation Famille Moulin.
Au croisement de préoccupations politiques, économiques et esthétiques, le travail de Valerie Snobeck fonctionne par accumulation, superposition et fusion de matériaux naturels et artificiels. Ses œuvres associent des éléments issus de divers milieux et époques, par exemple du plastique, du goudron, de la toile de jute ou de denim, des verreries, des images anciennes ou des impressions jet d’encre, afin de soulever des questions environnementales ou sociales. Dans son travail qui relève aussi bien de la photographie et de la sculpture que de la vidéo, le processus, complexe et multiple, compte autant que le produit fini.
Née en 1980 à Wadena (États-Unis), Valerie Snobeck vit et travaille à New York. Elle a obtenu un BFA à la Cloud State University de St. Cloud et un MFA à l’université de Chicago.
