Laurent Valera is a multidisciplinary visual artist. He explores many fields of contemporary visual art: painting, sculpture, installation, photography, video and performance. His curiosity and his desires lead him to shift his fields of action in order to experiment and develop transdisciplinary projects such as the contemporary dance piece "Souffles" in collaboration with choreographer Christine Hassid.

Like an archaeologist digging into geological strata, Laurent Valera explores the liquid spaces of water. Water is like a surface that reveals a depth in which we can speculate, like a material to think about, to dream about, to study, to recreate. Laurent Valera sees water as the structuring element of life, both in its form and in its aspirations, carrying and traversing living things for over three billion years. It is on this basis that he constructs a profusion of proposals that enable him to question both life and the workings of our contemporary societies.

Through his work and his artistic proposals, Laurent Valera pursues his understanding of life and the living. He trained in self-induced cognitive trance with Corine Sombrun and her team at the TranceLab Institute in 2022.


His creative journey is a life path leading to spiritual development.

 


Participated in the Salon de Montrouge in 2008, first resident of the Institut Culturel Bernard Magrez in 2011, finalist in the Talents Contemporains de la Fondation François Schneïder à Wattwiller in 2013, participated in Nuit blanche Paris in 2014, Biennale de Dakar Off in 2018, the Medio Acqua exhibition at the Bordeaux Submarine Base in 2019, guest artist for the Bordeaux-les-bains exhibition at the Bordeaux Métropole Archives in 2021, "Nous, les fleuves" exhibition at the Musée des Confluences in Lyon with the work "Le regard de l'eau" and in Marseille and Istres for Arts Éphémères 2024.


Laurent Valera carries out numerous artist residencies in France and abroad with institutions and private foundations: Alliance française d'Arusha in Tanzania in 2016 for work on climate change and the melting glaciers of Kilimanjaro, Oberpfälzer Künstlerhaus Art Center in Schwandorf, Germany in 2017, Ministère de la Culture as part of a corporate artist residency in French Guiana with the EDF company in 2017-2018, the Southern African Foundation For Contemporary Art (S. A.F.F.C.A.) in South Africa in 2018, the Communauté de Communes Causse et Vallée de la Dordogne in the Lot department for a residency-mission in 2020-2021, and the town of Saint-Rémy-de-Provence in 2023

In 2021, he and choreographer Christine Hassid will develop a contemporary dance show entitled "Souffles", to be presented at Bordeaux Métropole's Été Métropolitain 2023 and at the Festival "Le temps d'aimer la danse" in Biarritz in September 2023, and in Luxembourg at the Théâtre d'Esch-sur-Alzette on March 29, 2024.

Idols, wool (felt) sculptures, 2024.

Work in progress. Sculptures made from wool felt (alpaca, merino, ewe). Some sculptures include elements of plant basketry.

This research and work have been made possible by a research grant from ADAGP (winner end 2023), awarded in early 2024.

 

Finding a connection with other living beings, animal and mineral, finding meaning in life, is what these wool felt statuettes embody for Laurent Valera. The softness of this natural material gives shape to reconnecting transitional objects. Doudous, dolls, ritual objects, Idols invite us to rediscover the gentleness of being in the world. On a spiritual path, Laurent Valera summons up the imaginary links and forgotten practices of our contemporary Western civilizations, in an attempt to reconnect with something greater than oneself and, he hopes, bring us back to a relationship of equity, tolerance and serenity with the living.

"The look of water" (Le regard de l'eau),  Laurent Valera, 2024.

Dynamic, interactive sculpture in brushed stainless steel and mirror-polished stainless steel.
Limited edition of 8 and two artist's editions.
Dimensions 240 cm high x 311 cm wide.

 


"Water business", installation created during an artist residency at the Oberpfälzer Künstlerhausde in Schwandorf, Germany, April-May 2017.
Dimensions 4m x 3m x 1.50m. Water glasses, lamp.

As with his two other installations, Lumières de sirènes and Source de vie, Laurent Valera uses the reflection of light on the water in the glasses to generate this shocking anamorphosis: Water on the ground becomes Money in light reflections on the wall.

How do you turn water into gold? Multinationals (including Nestlé, with over seventy brands around the world...) are taking advantage of the planet's water resources to sell them at high prices, thanks in particular to the bottled water trade.

These companies are making billions worldwide. Spearheading a global strategy, the water business employs the sometimes expeditious methods of the world's most powerful agribusiness groups. The development of this sector hinges on a crucial question, the subject in many countries of a legal vacuum from which these companies' lawyers and lobbyists know how to take advantage: who owns the water?

"Immortals", video produced for the exhibition "Ces chuchotements tout autour" - Centre d'art contemporain l'ÉCOLE - association CHABRAM2 in Touzac, Charente, 2023.

Duration 4min54s.

This hypnotic video plunges us into a luminous space, half aquatic, half aerial, in which streams of marbles play like little cherubs cast by a mysterious shadow. In praise of creation and life, in praise of water, this video is a manifesto of artist Laurent Valera's spiritual quest.


"Letting go", sculpture of variable dimensions, 2020-2021.

The intimate relationship that man has forged with water over hundreds of thousands of years has changed in less than a century: we've domesticated it. Like the farmed animals and plants we've been producing for millennia, water is losing its vigor and vitality. Channelled, chemically treated and exploited, we no longer regard it as a precious and sacred element, as a common good of all living beings on our planet, but quite simply as a quantifiable, monetizable and privatizable resource, to the point of becoming a financial product in California since 2020. Laurent Valera's three sculptures "Lâcher la bride", "Bien commun" and "J'étais sauvage" remind us of all this.

"Day zero", installation, 2018

 

Work produced during an artist residency in South Africa, invitation by the Southern African Foundation For Contemporary Art and Project Space, Johannesburg - Knysna, January to March 2018.

 

2018 - Victim of the El Niño climatic phenomenon, Cape Town will be the first major city in the world to run out of water. In anticipation of "day zero", which could occur on April 16, the countdown is on and restrictions are being put in place.

April 1, April 12, April 22... While the exact date varies according to calculations, one thing is certain: in Cape Town, "day zero" - the day when not a single drop of water will flow from the tap - is both near and inevitable (at the time this article went to press, the Cape Town City Hall counter was estimating April 16).

 "There are still people who think that this day can't come, and that the city's seven projects to increase our resources by 200 million liters a day will be enough to save us, but that's not the case. And while these programs will make us more resilient to future shortages, they won't prevent us from reaching ground zero this time," explained Patricia De Lille, the mayor of the South African metropolis of over 430000 inhabitants, in a statement released on January 17, 2018.


"The glaciers of Kilimanjaro", installation, 2016.

 

This installation was created as part of Laurent Valera's artist residency at the Alliance Française d'Arusha in Tanzania. The theme of the residency: climate change and the melting glaciers of Kilimanjaro. October and November 2016.

Traditional Tanzanian fabrics (massaï shuka, kangas, kitengé...), sisal ropes, red earth, plants and ice.

Dimensions: fabric structure 5m in diameter and 2m high, disc of earth on the ground 5m in diameter, overall height of installation 2.70m.

 

 Maasai legend has it that God lives at the summit of Kilimanjaro. With a splendid golden net, he captures the clouds and throws them into the volcano's crater, causing water to gush from the springs.

The work les glaciers du Kilimandjaro is inspired by this legend.

It consists of a patchwork of fabrics suspended over a clay floor (the shape suggests Mount Kilimanjaro in reverse). Every day, a bucket of ice is poured into this fabric half-sphere. The ice gradually melts and drips through the fabric to water a small oasis of plants in the center of the earthen disk. Beyond this, the clay gradually cracks, suggesting desertification.

The total disappearance of the Kilimanjaro ice cap in Tanzania is predicted for 2030!

Melting glaciers have become an emblematic image of global warming. Rising temperatures can change the vegetation around us, but it's very difficult to see these changes in the landscape. By contrast, the sight of a large glacier shrinking to nothing is more striking, and raises awareness of the influence of climate on the world.

Kilimanjaro is an emblematic site in Africa. It is Africa's highest peak (5892m). Local climate change is affecting the longevity of its glaciers through reduced snowfall. Deforestation at the foot of Kilimanjaro is also exacerbating this phenomenon.

 

At the foot and on the slopes of Kilimanjaro grow tall trees, which in turn cover coffee and banana trees. This traditional farming system, known as the Chagga method, supports over a million people. But in the 1990s, the price of coffee collapsed and the local people turned to the timber trade.

Thousands of hectares were cleared, turning entire forests into desert. Temperatures rose by three degrees and rainfall fell by 20%.

 "Source", installation, 2014.
Variable dimensions.
Clear plastic cups, water, white cotton curtain, lamp (cut-out), fan.

 

This work was imagined by Laurent Valera at the end of 2013 and produced by the Musée des Abattoirs de Toulouse and La Fabrique (CIAM) for the Vertigo exhibition in 2014.

 

On the ground, the African continent. An African spring made up of hundreds of cups of water. It's lit by a lamp from the ceiling.

On the curtain, hundreds of luminous circles. They are the result of light reflecting off the water in certain glasses (water levels vary from one glass to another). Together, these circles create Europe.  
As the cups are filled, reflections are projected onto the curtain. The African continent on the floor generates the European continent on the white fabric.

Africa in the spotlight, center, source and resource, generator of Europe.

Source of the first hominids, source of the riches on which Europe developed.

A source of cultures and energies, rooted in the soil and the earth, it generates a flickering Europe (under the action of the fan's air, the water in the cups moves, causing the reflections on the curtain to shift) that develops a humanity "off the ground", disconnected from a man-nature link.

Europe is seen here as ghostly, with its very survival under threat (aging populations, etc.).  Vitality and solidity are represented here by Africa and Africans in glasses of water, well seated on the earth, water source of life.

If we switch off the lights, Africa goes out, but its physical reality, its glasses of water, remain there, waiting, while Europe disappears !

Europe is a lark for millions of Africans, but for how much longer ?


"Souffles", contemporary dance performance around an installation by Laurent Valera, 2021-2024.
Cross-disciplinary project proposed by visual artist Laurent Valera, co-created by Christine Hassid and Laurent Valera for Christine Hassid Project CHp. 2021-2024.

 

Souffles embodies life. Through an extremely light veil and moving bodies, the work reveals the flow of life. This fluid material becomes a dynamic water surface, feeding off its environment. We are witnessing the early days of origins, when the first combinations of simple elements gradually gave rise to life in water. Bodies become forms, and vice versa. Rhythms combine one moment, only to break apart the next. Complexity intensifies and organizes itself in spite of everything. Flux, reflux, attraction, repulsion, inhalation, exhalation. The work is built around the causal relationships between cohesion and freedom. Souffles #1 is ultimately a choreographic experiment linked to the elaboration of living mechanisms, linking events to construct themselves in real time. The dancers both lead and undergo the piece at the same time, the space participating with them in the constantly renewed creation.

"Water suction" Part. VI: light, painting, 2021-2022

 

Water suction (Aspirations d'eau) is a series of pictorial works that has been in several parts since 2014.
In this work, the artist leaves water autonomous in its own actions and aspirations. It is water, with its physical and chemical properties, that organizes the space of the format. To achieve this, the creative protocol evolves from pane to pane, with constraints imposed by the artist on the element in its aqueous phase: constraints of form and material, of objects (fabric, waterproof veil...). It's only after a few days' drying that he discovers the actions inscribed by the water on the surface of the support. In Aspirations d'eau Part. I and V, the action of water soaks the material, imprinting another revelation on the reverse. Through these traces, the artist reveals an action of collecting, like a memory of the history of water's journey. His idea is to read into them an intrinsic language of the living, in which water would be the architect and organizer of life on planet earth.


"H-O-H", video, 2021

 

 Text by and read by poet Frédérique Soumagne.

This video will be presented in the exhibition H-O-H, from September 11 to October 30, 2021 at the Espace du Bois Fleuri in Lormont.

The genesis of this work comes from a reflection by artist Laurent Valera on the symmetry of the water molecule H2O: H-O-H.

Water has supported life for over 3.5 billion years. The first elements developed and combined to form increasingly complex beings. For the artist who sees water as the orchestra conductor of living things, it occurred to him that living things might have developed structurally in symmetry, axis or point, due to the fact that they bathed in an element that was itself structured in symmetry, two hydrogen atoms framing an oxygen atom, H-O-H.

All living things on our planet contain water, and all of them develop in symmetry.

This poetic, hypnotic video, H-O-H, continuously creates symmetrical forms and propositions, evoking an ever-developing organic world.

"Water suction Part. Vbis" (Aspirations d'eau Part. Vbis), one-design on paper, 2024

 

Water suction (Aspirations d'eau) is a series of pictorial works that has been in several parts since 2014.
In this work, the artist leaves water autonomous in its own actions and aspirations. It is water, with its physical and chemical properties, that organizes the space of the format. To achieve this, the creative protocol evolves from pane to pane, with constraints imposed by the artist on the element in its aqueous phase: constraints of form and material, of objects (fabric, waterproof veil...). It's only after a few days' drying that he discovers the actions inscribed by the water on the surface of the support. In Aspirations d'eau Part. I and V, the action of water soaks the material, imprinting another revelation on the reverse. Through these traces, the artist reveals an action of collecting, like a memory of the history of water's journey. His idea is to read into them an intrinsic language of the living, in which water would be the architect and organizer of life on planet earth.