Anne-Valérie Gasc

Since the mid-2000s, Anne-Valérie Gasc has been undertaking projects which are like so many strategies of destruction aimed at causing the collapse of reality, and calling into question the immoveable, the perennial, and the established. Be it by way of explosives, sound waves, hydraulic sabotage, weakening structures, or burning down, each strategy of destruction devised by the artist is aimed at giving rise to this toppling where there is no longer any space or time reference. It is in these interstices of doubt that art can come about: "At the precise moment when nothing is certain any more, otherwise put, when everything is possible". To define her approach, the artist likes quoting Michel Foucault: "I am a maker of explosives. I make something which is in the end used for a siege, a war, or a destruction. I am not for destruction but I am for the fact that one can pass, one can advance, one can topple walls..." ("Je suis un artificier", 1975, in Roger-Pol Droit, Michel Foucault, interviews.)