Light and profound, Claire Chesnier's painting reflects Corneille's famous oxymoron: “That obscure clarity that falls from the stars.”

In painting, as elsewhere, we must be wary of simplistic categories, those that classify a work in a single word: abstract or figurative. Nothing is that simple. Such is the work of Claire Chesnier, an artist who prefers to situate herself “on the edge” of these registers, or perhaps in both at once. Faced with her large inks on mounted paper, we initially seek to cling to an existing, albeit clearly uncertain, horizon, a familiar line, a cloud perhaps. And then suddenly we give up in this unequal struggle. Milky green of indistinct memories, lingering pink flakes, lingering mauve and then more green, deep, opaque, a burial of fir trees... Will it engulf us? Here we are, lost, body and soul. We think of Monet's words: “I don't want to paint things, I want to paint the vibration of the air between them.” The body, precisely. Claire Chesnier's painting leaves something of the trace of the body. First, through its format, a very assertive vertical, cut to the scale of her silhouette, and a width that she can embrace with a single gesture. Then, through her approach. When she says, “It's all about posture,” we think of the dancer she once was, of the laws of gravity and fluid movement. Finally, through her trace on the paper. “The touch,” she says, “reflects the way you position yourself in front of the surface. Will it be firm, authoritative? I like lightness and nuance. Nothing is opaque or fixed.” “ It is this nuance that ink, her favorite material, allows. ”It constantly eludes me with its fundamentally eccentric character, this fluidity that favors fleeting sensations, open to an unlimited world. In every painting, there is a fragment of life, nuanced, jubilant. That's how it is, and it forces humility."