Garance Vallée
When Garance Vallée graduated as an architect in 2017, she had no idea she was less than a year away from becoming a prominent figure in the design world. At Milan Design Week, humanity literally fell in love with her iconoclast and uninhibited world, where the eye gets fooled and the heart educated.
The collection manoeuvres shapes to a surrealist world, trumps our eye with materials and walks a free line between primordial ceramics and modernist patterns. It almost feels like a utopian anthem as it beats on the earth and the many strata of civilisations, excavating stairs, arches, vases, troglodyte alcoves. None of them brought up in their literal sense, always on the verge of meta-amphorisms, carving curiosity. Be ready to experience the signature colour palette of the artist and its luminous natural hues: terracotta, powdery cocoa, burnt spices...
A curious geological take on the world. Both terrestrial and architectural.
So here is the thing. One can wrestle with concrete all day long and still be a romantic at heart. The Parisian artist won't let us just take her word for it, she'll give proof of it throughout her work, finding a perfect balance between the rigour of architectural lines and the warmth of organic shapes. Whether for Martina Gamboni in Milan, with Maison Margiela or in the pages of Vogue, she always perpetuates that contrast with her strong leitmotivs: her telluric energy, her mineral strata, her fantasy antique archetypes and that light from the dawn of civilisations.
Why such a sense of freedom in her art? Surely the unbridled approach of the compositions plays a part. Garance Vallée cuts angles loose, opens up traditional architecture perspectives and deceives the eye. Collaborating with Asteré naturally became an opportunity to explore these trompe-l'oeil while finding a path from volumes to the two dimensions of a mural creation to keep them real.