«spell» im Hebel_121
PREMIERE. Seit 1998 lädt der Kunstraum Hebel_121 Künstler für raumbezogene Arbeiten ein. Für die 14. Intervention mit dem Titel «spell» kommt die amerikanische Künstlerin Valerie Arber zu ihrem ersten Auftritt in der Schweiz.
© Basler Zeitung, Kulturmagazin, 15. 9. 2005

Valerie Arber show opens tomorrow in Switzerland BASEL, Switzerland – Here’s a good chance for art lovers to stock up on some frequent flyer miles. A lot of them. Valerie Arber will be exhibiting a new series of her subtly monadic prints.
‚Spell‘ at Hebel_121 exhibition space in Basel, Switzerland, beginning tomorrow.
Hebel_121 was established as an exhibition/habitat space in 1995 by a former Chinati artist in residence Daniel Göttin and curator and fellow artist Gerda Maise. Göttin was a Chinati resident in Marfa in 1993.
Working on a principle of less is more, Arber’s work necessarily rests within the Minimalist context: materialization seemingly without an opening gesture, the finished image itself adamantine in its sparseness.
What goes tacitly in the embedded objects of her images, – spheres gradating from hues light to darker, small blips of shapes composed like notes in a visual order – nears the sense of a past tilting more towards pre-B.C. than A.D., a visual primacy generating its own ineluctable grammar. It’s thoughtful. heady stuff.
© Big Bend Sentinel Marfa/TX, 15. September 2005