Born in Paris, Valérie Jolly lives and works in Brussels. She graduated from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design with a BA in Fine Arts.

She casts objects in sticky wet tissue paper and when the paper dries, what she peels off carries the form and marks of the original, only colourless and weightless. Strongly inspired by Marcel Duchamp’s poetic concept of the infra thin, her work deals with ideas of impermanence and the relationship between presence and absence. It questions the nature of things and of reality or the perception thereof. Her sculptures are like a trace, a vaporous evocation of the original subject matter. They could either be an apparition or in the process of vanishing.

Lately, she has developed a more abstract body of work, using building timber or found cardboard boxes which she assembles into minimalist forms that she casts in tissue paper and lights from the inside. The light reveals the intriguing sensual skin-like texture of the paper. Her latest series  ‘Equations of Equilibrium’ is made from pieces of found rubble of a demolished house. She mixes the delicately lit paper with the rough minerality of the stone.

Photo credit: Antoine d'Ansembourg