Valerie Snobeck
Thursday, 19 April 2012
Work from her oeuvre.
“The partially erased mirrors in Valerie Snobeck’s first New York solo flirt with avant-garde chestnuts like Duchamp’s “Large Glass” and Robert Rauschenberg’s “Erased de Kooning Drawing.” And as Ms. Snobeck deploys them in a scattered installation of wall and floor sculptures, they also perk up a tired post-Minimalist idiom.
Ms. Snobeck’s technique depends on the type of mirror she’s working with: she might use acid or a Brillo pad or a blade to abrade the surface. The resulting patterns vary from cloudy, as in “Static Movement,” to clean-edged, in “Replication.”
The mirrors are sometimes adorned with crumpled and draped sheets of printed plastic, as well as sheets of the adhesive film typically used to protect laptop and smart-phone screens. The screen film is a clever touch; it keeps some of the mirrors from looking too antiquey and invokes the narcissism of modern-day gadgetry. In a few of the larger works, chunks of dyed wood add color and structural support.”- NY Times