For the past four years, Claire Chesnier has followed the same creative process: she soaks thick watercolor paper with water and fixes it vertically, defines her working area with adhesive tape, then releases large flows of dark colors using a brush dipped in ink. Using a large Korean brush, she then sweeps horizontally across this vertical flow. She calls this back-and-forth motion “re-voilement,” which slows the fall of pigments onto the white page. By stretching the inks to work their juice with her arms, she keeps them bound to this luminous background through chromatic gradations, before it is too late. Once the ink has dried, there is no going back. In this real-time practice, there is no room for second thoughts. As it stiffens as it dries, the paper also loses its capillarity. Mastery of this protocol, achieved through practice, never exhausts the capriciousness of the infinitely unstable inks. Everything depends on the degree of humidity of the support and the quality of the pigments. Claire Chesnier responds to all these micro-events with her brush.

Through the lively and constant dialogue she demands with the material, the execution of these paintings requires great concentration. For Claire Chesnier, painting is a bridge stretched between light and ink, which detaches itself like a shadow, and is constantly being tested. It is considered complete when the ink has flowed smoothly towards the light of the “background.” She captures this transition in an almost photographic snapshot. The immediacy of the process means that one drawing leads to another, with the formal questions raised during its execution being carried over to another drawing. This is why Claire Chesnier numbers them. Formal resonances appear after the fact, which an exhibition will then reveal. From a physical and meditative protocol tailored to her ambition, Claire Chesnier creates works whose strong presence captivates.

Marguerite Pilven