Instruction
Artiste
Valérie Favre
Valérie Favre was born in Evilard, in the canton of Bern, in 1959. She lives and works between Berlin and Paris. After a career as an actress, she turned to painting in the early 1990s. An adept of Figuration Libre, the artist explores new narrative and conceptual perspectives in her work, which deals in particular with the relationship between fiction and reality, play and life, domination and powerlessness.
Various protagonists, presented in spaces drawn and assembled by montage, are invited into her paintings. Elements drawn from art history and cinematic references are added, forming a complex network of references. Acrobats, imaginary creatures, ghosts, mysterious symbols, self-portraits and quotations: the public is invited to plunge into the pictorial space as if into a narrative that plays itself out ad infinitum. Valérie Favre organises the space of her images as if they were large theatrical tableaux, placing the scenes of her drawings in frames. In the same manner as her paintings, her drawings are organised into series executed over several years.
As a child, who hasn't played with snails or marvelled at certain insects? Valérie Favre was inspired by her childhood memories to compose her instruction, in which she proposes an activity that marries humour with the seriousness of the environmental emergency.