It is always the same sense of wonder, the same pause that Claire Chesnier's colourful abstractions (France, b. 1986) compel us to take. Few works have this power, the power to capture our gaze, shape it, and flood it with texture and vi-bration. We were familiar with her large ink works on paper, with their subtle shades ranging from yellow to bronze, pink to purple, bristling with strong horizon lines, where the pigment drips meet to create sublime landscapes, evanescent nocturnes, damp dawns, awakening sparkles...
But this exhibition in the large white gallery of the art centre affirms a renewed quest. While the formats are still vertical, they are closer to square and enclose land-scapes with more rococo volutes, as if a fragment of a sky by François Boucher had been taken and enlar-ged here. The colours are more ethereal. Sunbeams have replaced nocturnal streaks, except that the orange-tinged storm is about to unleash its purple rains. A feast for the eyes. Monet was fascinated by the changing colours throughout the day. So is Chesnier. On thin co-lumns of coloured paper, daylight bounces off to tint the surrounding space, while her layered inks turn the landscape upside down at our feet, like floating mirrors. It is pure meditation. Let's stay here for 12 minutes, in front of one of her abs-tractions, to experience 12 hours of sunshine in fast motion. The wonder is at its peak and the me-mory stays with us for a long time.