Born in 1986, Claire Chesnier works exclusively on paper, always in vertical formats no larger than two meters by one and a half meters, with shapes inscribed on the white background of the sheet in trapezoids or other polygons (pentagons or hexagons) tapering downward or upward—but never toward the right or left edges— sometimes slightly rounded at the top or bottom, with clean-cut shapes offering a colored range in a gradient between two colors of diluted ink—which, as a result, form a third color in the area where the two mix—impregnating the paper pulp.

The formats: they are obviously tailored to the body, encompassing it entirely horizontally and vertically. The body confronts the pictorial expanse as much as it is absorbed by it. At the right distance, the eye drifts across the surface, over the colored surface with no other reference point than this measurement—neither too large nor too small.

Forms: the form is always flat—the color implies no effect of relief or modeling—and everything takes place on the surface, but the form itself, its outline, the boundary between the white and the colored area creates a dynamic: a sensation of elevation or fall, of opening or closing, or of perspective that “virtualizes” the paper. The white is there, visible, but it is absent, and the clean cut—except in the early paintings—between the white area and the colored area accentuates the feeling that this white is a frame. Everything lies in the contradiction between the immaculate and the stained, the sharp and the hazy, the defined and the undefined—a sensation reinforced since the artist began mounting his papers on a hard support.

Color: it is applied diluted with brushes, layer after layer, each reinforcing the density and brightness or burying them. The painting is constructed veil after veil, and the color only really appears in this chemical process of covering—after drying, of course. While the process may seem haphazard, it is not a matter of painting blindly, but of developing tone within and with the pictorial materiality. Color reveals itself both in itself and in its encounter with another tone and, once again, in the areas of mixing. The essential question then becomes the light passing more or less through the layers, from the strongest irradiation to the most subtle modulation, passing through the dull: “My paintings are an affirmation of the surface and a search for the ‘depth of light.’” “

Paintings without subject matter, deliberately repetitive but suggesting infinite variations, Claire Chesnier's works are truly abstract: ”Precisely, I think I really started painting when I got rid of the question of ‘what (to paint)?’ because painting cannot be subject to anything other than itself. The painting I pursue is without pretext or anecdote. It is presence, subject." However, this pure presence can, despite everything, evoke echoes with other experiences—extra-pictorial—or analogies with the world or natural phenomena—also pure presence—and if the question is not the analogy itself—seeing, for example, a dawn or the northern lights—this experience of painting freed from subject matter is only valid in the enriched experience it offers us of the world and that we have and will have of the world—including painting.

[1] Claire Chesnier, “Constructing Liquid Veils: An Interview with Claire Chesnier by Matthew Hassell,” New York Art Magazine, November 2013, reproduced on the artist's website: http://www.clairechesnier.com/textes-texts/constructing-liquid-veils-an-interview-with-claire-chesnier-by-matthew-hassell. The artist's comments have been translated by the author.

[2] “Dans l'oeil des collectionneurs: Claire Chesnier,” interview by Julie Perin, Alternatif-art, June 2015, reproduced on the artist's website: http://www.clairechesnier.com/textes-texts/dans-loeil-des-collectionneurs-claire-chesnier-interview-par-julie-perin