Some graphic practices are reversible, allowing for corrections and erasures. Others, however, are irreversible, as the artist's intervention is indelible. Claire Chesnier's work falls into the latter category: that of doing without undoing. The chosen format determines the extent of a gesture subject to an unchanging protocol: the artist prepares her paper by wetting it, uses masking tape to mark out a central reserve whose edges are never orthogonal, and then straightens the sheet to apply highly diluted pigment inks with a soft brush. Everything must be done on damp paper, a fresco. Evaporation will permanently fix the colors, their migrations, and their bleeding. Superimposed in translucent veils, the inks are reminiscent of the technique invented by Helen Frankenthaler in the early 1950s, soak-stain, which was taken up by Morris Louis in his famous Veils. This involved drowning acrylic resin and turpentine to allow the fluid mixture to soak into the raw canvas. The procedure generated the appearance of antiform flows, as well as a sensation of flat expansion. In Claire Chesnier's work, however, the impregnation remains subject to depth. This is because the window cut into the sheet becomes a fragment of a colored tablecloth that virtually overflows it. As this central reserve darkens, drinking in successive waves of ink, it subtracts from the paper's luminosity, carving out an atmospheric perspective comparable to Impressionist clouds. The clear horizon above the matte, luminescent flat areas then offers itself as a breath of fresh air, a clearing that the artist simply calls “opening.”