For her inaugural stateside show, the Parisian artist and designer creates an inhabitable world of her paintings, drawings, and sculptures, which are all united by a slightly Surreal aesthetic language grounded in earthbound tones. At once environment and still life, Vallée’s scenes tend to oscillate between dimensions and beckon viewers to project themselves inside the intimate, home-like interior universes they depict. The spellbinding effect mirrors reality—her sculptures almost appear to have been plucked directly from the canvas. 

Vallée views the home as a newly emergent symbol of isolation and self-reinvention, especially during lockdown. “Inhabiting space, whether it means the space of the drawing, painting, or the installation of sculpture, is at the forefront of this work,” she says. “I like the notion of building for humankind, that bodies can enter and experience the spaces of the work. I like the notion of gesture, to make it present and traceable in each work. Spaces live by the presence of human experiences. These places represented don’t exist, yet painting it, I believe that I’m building it, I give it a reality, a materiality, and in a certain way, I inhabit it.”