VALEZIENNE

Oil on Canvas 90 X 120 CM Collection: TIMELESS MAJESTY Quantum imprint No. TM-V.O2 Curatorial statement by Mr. Dong-hyun Yoon Archive for Trans-Contextual Inquiry (ATI, Seoul/Berlin) I first encountered Valézienne in silence. Not the absence of sound, but the kind of cognitive stillness that occurs when the mind, unexpectedly, recognizes something it cannot understand only receive. I remember blinking, instinctively attempting to contextualize it within some known lineage of figuration or minimalism, but quickly realizing this imprint did not descend from any tradition I was familiar with. It was not born of narrative, identity, nor style. It simply was suspended, resolved, unnervingly complete. What I experienced then, I later understood more precisely through the lens of perceptual neuroscience. Valézienne is not a depiction it is a disruption. It bypasses symbolic interpretation and instead enters through the cognitive backdoor of spatial contradiction and perceptual recursion. The brain’s pattern-seeking machinery particularly the visual cortex and default mode network searches for context, for the story, for logic. But none arrives. Instead, we are offered what seems as a quantum frequency sealed in form. The figure at the center is not “a woman,” nor a character. It is a harmonic construct: a container for dimensional information. Its symmetry and stillness produce neither tension nor comfort, but something far rarer synaptic coherence. That eerie feeling of remembering something that never happened. The longer one stands before it, the more the mind relinquishes control. This is not spiritual metaphor. This is a phenomenon measurable in the slowing of ocular saccades, the dilation of focus, and the dampening of inner narrative. And yet, despite its neurological elegance, Valézienne is not cold. Its gradients are skin-like, its inner surfaces pulse with near-biological resonance. Pretto’s material control borders on the surgical, not because of virtuosity for its own sake, but because of the necessity to stabilize the signal she receives. This is what separates her from hyperrealists: The difference lies in her intention. She isn’t trying to copy life. She’s trying to hold still something that lives just outside of it.. The autonomy of Valézienne lies not in what it says, but in its refusal to say. It does not explain. It does not perform relatability. It insists. Its terror, if one feels it, lies in its flawlessness. In its lack of apology. In its refusal to surrender into interpretation. This is why viewers may find themselves unsettled: they are not used to being addressed by an imprint that does not bend to be understood. Collectors and curators should know: Valézienne does not belong to the art historical continuum it is an interruption of it. It marks a before and after in Pretto’s trajectory, and possibly, in our own perceptual frontier. Dong-hyun Yoon Archive for Trans-Contextual Inquiry (ATI, Seoul/Berlin)

Exhibition Note

(Independent Perspective)

Valézienne (2025)

Exhibition Note

I kept looking for a place to enter the painting. At first, it feels like it should be straightforward. The surface is controlled, almost too controlled black, white, and a kind of gold that carries weight without slipping into decoration. It gives the impression that it knows exactly what it’s doing. So I assumed it would open.It doesn’t.

There are moments where something almost forms. A curve begins to suggest a body, or something close to it. I thought I had it for a second, but it doesn’t hold. The image slips before it settles, and once you notice that, it keeps happening. It’s not abstract. Or at least, that’s not the right word.

But it doesn’t behave like an image either, which is where it becomes difficult to place.

Most paintings, even the more resistant ones, give you something to work with. A direction. A way in. This one doesn’t seem interested in doing that. It holds itself back, or maybe just holds itself in place, I’m not sure which.

And it doesn’t seem particularly concerned with being understood. I realize that bothers me more than it should.

I tried to stabilize it. Stepping closer, then further away, adjusting position as if the problem was mine, which, to be fair, it might be. But nothing resolves. The image remains composed, but never fully available. The precision makes this harder to ignore.

There’s no hesitation in how it’s made. Every edge is controlled. Every transition feels deliberate. So the instability isn’t coming from a lack of decision. It feels… maintained.

The gold form should anchor everything. It almost does. But even that feels slightly displaced, as if it answers to a different order than the rest of the painting. I kept returning to that, expecting it to settle the image. It doesn’t.

At some point, I had to stop trying to make it behave.

The question shifts, whether you want it to or not.

Not what the painting is, but whether it accepts the terms under which we usually understand one. I’m not convinced that it does. Or maybe it does, and I’m missing it, but I don’t think so.

There’s a quiet resistance in the work. Not aggressive, not confrontational. Just… refusal. It doesn’t negotiate. It doesn’t offer a clear entry point, and it doesn’t seem interested in providing one. I’m not sure I trust it. But I also notice that I haven’t let it go. Which is probably the more relevant detail.

Iason Kyras

Original note published in Substack

Response to “Notes on Valézienne”

I read Kyras’ note, and I think he’s hesitating in the wrong place.

The painting is not as inaccessible as he makes it sound. It doesn’t “refuse” in the way he describes, it’s more selective than that. There is a structure to it, even if it doesn’t resolve in a familiar way. The figure is there.

Not fully, not in a descriptive sense, but it’s present. You can see it in the way the weight gathers toward the center, in the way certain lines hold longer than others. It’s not disappearing, it’s being contained. I don’t think the painting is withholding anything. If anything, it’s compressing it.

That’s why it feels unstable at first. You’re not given space to move through it the way you expect. Everything is pulled inward, held together too tightly, and that creates the tension he’s describing. The gold form, he reads it as displaced. I don’t see it that way. It feels more like a point of pressure. Not an anchor exactly, but something the rest of the image is organized around, even if it’s not obvious at first glance. It’s what keeps the painting from dissolving completely. There is a body in there.Or something very close to one.

But it’s not interested in being recognized as such, which is where I think Kyras becomes frustrated. He’s waiting for confirmation that the image will declare itself. It doesn’t. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t already there. I don’t experience the work as indifferent.

It’s too deliberate for that. There’s too much control in how it holds itself together. Nothing here feels accidental or unresolved. If anything, it feels… contained to the point of resistance.Which may be why it reads as closed. I’ll admit, I’m not entirely sure where it lands.

Whether it’s figuration that refuses to complete itself, or something closer to an image that never intended to be read that way in the first place, I can’t fully say. But I don’t think the uncertainty comes from a lack in the work. It comes from trying to place it too quickly. And I’m not convinced that it wants to be placed at all.

Mara Eleni Vass

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