Valero Kim

The sensitive skin, the erogenous body, the fire. Valero Kim's tactile objects.

Indeed, this extremely "laborious", gigantic work of this "weaver", of this true "craftsman", is that of a "body in extension", extension of the "body surface", unfolded by the magical manipulation of needles, nylon threads and "ramie", with the patience of a spider, the artist deploys on the web, this dermal sensory that inhabits desire.

Dress the canvases to better undress the “sensitive skin”, the original one, that of the body's memory, to make it emerge through the translucency of the fabrics and nylon threads.

In the assembly of the "small squares" of fabric, with needle and nylon threads, in the construction of the first "patchworks", it happened one day to him "to make visible the knots and the threads, which are usually" behind. As in any seam. From that moment on, these “threads” will grow and impose themselves more and more, until they command the work in a way, the artist will be overwhelmed by his “find”.

Unconscious act par excellence, this "accident", symptomatic even, is of great expressive significance. Trapped the artist, thus finds the support of his artistic work.

Will these “patchworks”, through this very “obsessive” attempt to assemble “pieces of skin”, be endlessly recreated? These Objects-Art, between painting and bas-reliefs are above all an invitation to rediscover a sensitive and soft body, which by the call of the gaze, ask to be touched, caressed by the viewer.

These "Boursouflures" are above all an amplification of the sensitive tactile, epidermal, in their airy density and by the choice, of the colors in such a personal palette, of artificial materials such as nylon thread, that the light accentuates this tactile dimension, and through this return on the viewer.

Hair, hair, pubis, tuft, grove, mane, lock, these words which are essential with regard to the work of Valero-Kim, are only signifiers of call for the emergence of a sensitive skin, behind these aesthetic artifices that are “patchworks” and “blisters”. Real “Touch-Objects”.

These threads, and these “festive fabrics”, these fabrics of “ancestral ceremonies”, are not there to obscure something, they are there rather to undress this “sensitive skin”, in two possible manifestations: that of restraint and that of the sensitive explosion.

This eroticism is restrained and explosive at the same time, (where) the very intense, almost violent colors, so "flashy", so fluorescent, blisters, captivate by their very musical rhythm.

This insane challenge, to introduce even more light, more transparency, not by the application of pigments or oils, as in painting, but by the "intermediary" of translucent or colored materials: fabrics, synthetic threads , nylon has the effect of producing through their composition an impression of "seeing the tactile sensation", accompanied by a silent emotion.

… The artist succeeds in “forming one body” with his Patchworks and Boursouflures and above all in leaving a strong “trace” of his passage. This "tactile sensation" which "touches us by the gaze" in Valero-Kim's work and the aesthetic emotion that goes with it is that of the restitution of our own "sensitive skin".

- Ph. D. Fernando Bayro-Corrochano.