Claire Chesnier
Claire Chesnier
Presentation
Claire Chesnier first encountered art through music and writing, which she practiced very early on. She devotes nearly twenty years to classical and contemporary dance, which she sees as a way to be at one with the music. Painting, which she has practiced since the beginning, is the decisive encounter experienced as an extension of the writing gesture and the incarnation of an extended dance gesture. Her commitment to painting is turned towards a physical and poetic relationship with the world, of apprehension of touch, and of the sensitive entanglement of things, of life. For her, "painting is a story of touch, of how to touch and be touched. She arrives where words fail by tactility and rhythm". She began her studies at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris and at the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, where she worked in the studio of the painter Jean-Michel Alberola and where her research was followed by the philosopher Alain Bonfand. She obtained her National Diploma of Fine Arts and her doctorate in Arts and Art Sciences. She is quickly noticed by the stylist Agnès b. who awards her the Prix des Amis des Beaux-Arts in 2011 and makes her join her gallery, the Galerie du jour agnès b. where they will collaborate from 2012 to 2017. This is followed by a collaboration with the ETC Gallery in Paris from 2018 to 2022. Claire Chesnier has won several prizes such as the Contemporary Talents Prize of the François Schneider Foundation, the Art Collector Prize, the Fénéon Prize of the Chancellery of the Universities of Paris as well as the Yishu 8 Prize of the House of Arts in Beijing where she studies the ancient painters that she looks at as much as the stones and mists that characterize them.
Education
Awards - Grants
Residencies
Collections
Vacant Landscapes
In reality, in front of this painting where color emancipates itself from the subject matter, one mainly thinks of Rothko. Chesnier openly admits her admiration for this pioneer of abstract expressionism. Rothko, whose colors, usually applied in transparent glazes, give rise to rectangular configurations symmetrically superimposed on an almost monochromatic background.
Just like him, in the works of the French artist, the color areas with blurred contours are like chromatic stretches of boundless radiant luminosity. Here, no details are subordinate to a whole but a swathe of paint, a coloring matter invading the surface. Boundless landscapes that resist the possibility of being traversed by a gaze, fields expanding infinitely and remaining inaccessible to the viewer. Each work addresses, in its own way, the problems of forms and colors, the relationship between opacity and transparency, between what veiled and unveiled, between saturated tones or velvety materials. There is no indication on the creation of the painting, no traces of a brush, no gestural touch signaling the process.
There is an astonishing contrast between this wide array of nuances sliding upon each other and the precision with which they are executed. This meticulous, perfectly controlled painting invites the viewer’s gaze to "decipher" the chromatic variations but keeps it at a distance. Unlike Rothko, who claimed to create a place where viewers are invited to enter, Chesnier's work, full of restraint, preserves itself, so to speak.
In this palette of colors, a line seems to separate the top - always brighter - and the bottom, always darker - perhaps sky and earth. However, this imaginary line, which some call the horizon, moves as one approaches it. The viewer gets lost in this space that eludes fixed references, in this field of uncertainty where the authoritarian gaze gives way to the hesitant eye.
André Breton wrote in 1941 about Yves Tanguy: "The appearance of Tanguy in the Neptunian light of clairvoyance gradually tightens the thread of the horizon that had broken. But with him, it is a new horizon, the one on which the landscape, no longer physical but mental, will establish itself." Is it this mental landscape that Claire Chesnier aims for?"
Itzhak Goldberg
No matter how much I move to the side, away from these images and back again, I cannot decide whether they are monochromatic variations of a single pigment or polychromatic hues that dilute, generate and scatter several others, and this undecidable problem offers a kind of revelation: there is no more hue, no more tint, the definition of chromatic tonality is transcended, there is only color, color that passes before me and meets me, that passes over the large sheets of paper, gliding, penetrating them, metamorphic without mutating, evolving. I perceive it as full and slow, expansive, and at the same time on the verge of disappearing, already ghostly.
What happens in this use of color, in this oscillation that goes from the density of the pigment to a luminous cloud of a halo, leads to a shift to a different way of seeing, to the acceptance of detachment, of the disappearance of forms but also to the acceptance of undecidability, indeterminacy, unpredictability. My intuition tells me that the image is there, in the radiant thickness of this floating line, at this porous edge, at this changeable, versatile border between abstraction—I stand before movements, forces, impulses, currents, presences—and figuration—I stand before landscapes, clearings, skies, dawns, fires, perhaps twilights, I stand before the dew of a winter meadow, condensation in a whisky glass, an evening sea, a cloudy sky, a ghostly love. I stand before absence, before something that is happening and that I do not know. What happens to us when we disappear. Disappearance.
Claire Chesnier remains at a distance, observing the emptiness, her language plays in the silence, clear, waiting, while she is a replica of her color, which enters into the whiteness of the paper, carrying it without forcing it, becoming one with the paper in the streaks that remain, the smoothness of a current, the suggestion of evaporation.
We look, and it is like a conversation, like taking up a language: our eyes are our mouths, our movements are like sentences, and soon only time is left —the time of painting, which is the time of looking....
When does the word “patience” come to my mind? I begin to move and the pictures vibrate around us, fluttering in chromatic instability, almost the same, essentially the same, in this vertical format that is proportional to the body, or rather to the body of the artist, as she writes in Fragments d’une déposition1: “My height, my shoulder, the extent and fullness of my arm movements correspond to the dimensions of the paper. I cut it to my size—the size of a woman. The horizon of the frame is thus drawn in this perceived space, in my scale....” Images that suddenly seem to encompass her completely, to regain their character of portraits—self-portraits.
I hear the word patience in this endless movement back to the paper, this bending of the upper body, this tension in the neck, this stretching of the arm, this letting go of the wrist. A subterranean tension that responds to the body, to pain, but also to pleasure. That repeats, starts again, returns, works to elicit meaning from the image, to reduce its complexity, to distill the smallest, most insignificant grain, in an effort to cancel out any motif, any intentionality. This persistence in painting. Patience as insistence, as resistance. Patience, silent and rebellious.
When I think about it, I probably felt this word in connection with that of confidence, of trust, which comes to mind at the same time. Having confidence in painting, relying on it, completely, accepting it without hesitation; letting go of control and reaffirming one’s instinct.... And no doubt I understand it, this word, through that of alliance, which is also in my head. Patience in alliance with time, endurance. A willingness to merge with the flow of life, to make a pact with time, to desire what is to come—amor fati. That crosses landscapes, breathes, travels far.
The sheets of paper are suspended, meaning is suspended, language is suspended, time is suspended, and the city pulsates around us as I discover this activation of abandonment—the impossible event that took place here. A painting of patience.
1 Claire Chesnier, Fragments d'une déposition (forthcoming).
Claire Chesnier, Paris
December 05, 2024 - January 25, 2025
Claire Chesnier, Lyon
October 26 - December 02, 2023
Group shows at Ceysson Gallery
Format paysage, Lyon
January 30 - March 22, 2025
Collective, Paris
June 27 - July 13, 2024
Selected solo shows
2025
Éclaircie à la verticale, curated by Isabelle Reiher, Marine Rochard, CCC-OD, Tours, France
Claire Chesnier, Galerie The Pill, Istanbul, Turkey
2024
Un rose, une rosée, un couchant, text : Maylis de Kerangal, Ceysson & Bénétière Gallery, Paris, France
2023
Rayer le jour, le soir étain, text : Itzhak Goldberg, Ceysson & Bénétière Gallery, Lyon, France
Les Jours, curated by Philippe Piguet, Chapelle de la Visitation, Centre d’Art de Thonon-les-Bains, France
2022
Mudhoney, Claire Chesnier - Denis Laget, curated by Jean-Charles Vergne, Galerie ETC, Paris, France
2021
Par espacements et par apparitions, texte de Pierre Wat, l’Ahah, Paris, France
2020
Le ciel aussi est un fracas, curated by Karim Ghaddab, Galerie ETC, Paris, France
2019
L’Art dans les chapelles, curated by Eric Suchère, Chapelle Trinité Castennec, Bieuzy, France
Une réserve de nuit, Claire Chesnier & Estèla Alliaud, curated by John Cornu, Galerie Art et Essai, Rennes, France
2018
Under B shall come Butterfly powder, Galerie Maior, Palma de Majorque, Spain
Fragments d’une déposition, Espace Commines, Paris, France
2016
Résonances, Galerie du jour agnès b., Paris, France
2014
L’aire des aurores, curated by Léa Bismuth, le Patio, Paris, France
2013
Résonance, Yishu 8 – Maison des Arts, Pékin, China
Docks Art Fair, c/o Galerie Leonardo Agosti, Pavillon 8, Lyon, France
2012
Fragments d’une déposition, Galerie du jour agnès b., Paris, France
Fragments d’une déposition, Galerie agnès b., Marseille, France
Parcours Saint-Germain, agnès b., Paris, France
Re-veiling, T-Gallery, Bratislava, Slovakia
Selected group shows
Dans le flou, une autre vision de l'art de 1945 à nos jours, curated by Claire Bernardi, Emilia Philippot Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris, France, travelling exhibition : CaixaForum, Madrid, Spain, and CaixaForum, Barcelone, Spain
Format paysage, commissariat : Anne Favier, Ceysson & Bénétière Gallery, Lyon, France
Collective, Galerie The Pill, Paris, France
2024
Le jour des peintres, curated by Thomas Gausserand & Thomas Lévy-Lasne, Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France
Monomania, Michael Woolworth Publications, Paris, France
Collective, Ceysson & Bénétière Gallery, Paris, FR
The Colour Out of Space, curated : Jean-Charles Vergne, Galerie The Pill, Istanbul, Turquie
Les lois de l’imaginaire, commissariat : Laure Forlay, Musée d’Art et d’Archéologie - FRAC Auvergne, Aurillac, France
Art Brussels, Galerie Ceysson & Bénétière, Bruxelles, Belgique
Tokyo Gendai, Galerie The Pill, Yokohama, Japon
Bibliography
Claire Chesnier, monographie, texts : Maylis de Kerangal, Pierre Wat, Molly Warnock, Claire Chesnier, Ed. JBE Books, Paris, France
Fragments, dir. Camille Saint-Jacques, Éric Suchère, « Brisées » by Claire Chesnier, Coll. Beautés, Ed. L’Atelier contemporain, Strasbourg, France
Sam Francis, dir. Pierre Wat, « La limite du ciel » by Claire Chesnier, Coll. Transatlantique, ER Publishing, Paris, France
Some of Us, dir. Marianne Derrien, Jérôme Cotinet-Alphaize, Ed. Manuella, Paris, France
L’Horizon d’un instant, Pierre Cendors, Claire Chesnier, Ed. L’Atelier contemporain, Strasbourg, France
Beautés, texts : Jean-Charles Vergne, Ed. FRAC Auvergne, Clermont-Ferrand, France
Beautés, dir. Camille Saint-Jacques, Éric Suchère, « Beautés » by Claire Chesnier, Coll. Beautés, Ed. L’Atelier contemporain & FRAC Auvergne, Strasbourg, France
Claire Chesnier - Les Jours, Semaine 03.23, dir. Philippe Piguet, chapelle de la Visitation, Thonon-les-Bains
Art & Essai, 2014-2020, dir. John Cornu, Ed. Art & Essai - Université Rennes 2 & cultureclub-studio, Rennes, France
Mudhoney, Claire Chesnier - Denis Laget, textes Jean-Charles Vergne, Galerie ETC, Paris, France
Les 30 ans de l’Art dans les chapelles, dir. Eric Suchère, « L’épaisseur d’un reflet » by Claire Chesnier
Inspiré.e.s, texts : Lucile Hitier et Sarah Caillet, Centre d’art l’ArTsenal, Dreux, France
Claire Chesnier, Le ciel aussi est un fracas, text : Karim Ghaddab, Ed. Galerie ETC, Paris, France
5/5, Estèla Alliaud, Claire Chesnier, dir. John Cornu, Éd. Art&Essai - Université Rennes 2 & cultureclub-studio, Rennes, France
L’Art dans les chapelles, dir. Eric Suchère, « Le vent continuellement domine les yeux », by Claire Chesnier
La Besogne des images, dir. Léa Bismuth, Mathilde Girard, Éd. Filigranes, Paris, France
Un lieu, loin, ici, Antoine Emaz,Claire Chesnier, dir. Armand Dupuy, Jeremy Liron, ,Coll. Livres d’artistes, Éd. Centrifuges, Saint-Jean La Buissière, France
Peindre dit-elle - chapitre 2, dir. Julie Crenn, Annabelle Ténèze, Amélie Lavin, Musée des Beaux Arts de Dole, France
2014
Avec et sans peinture, Ed. musée d’Art contemporain du Val-de-Marne (MAC VAL), Vitry-sur-Seine, France
Claire Chesnier - L’aire des aurores, dir. Léa Bismuth, Art Collector, Paris, France
Press
2023
L’Oeil, March, "50 artistes de la nouvelle scène française, Claire Chesnier" by Anne-Cécile Sanchez
"Claire Chesnier - Les Jours", week 03.23, text by : Philippe Piguet, Chapelle de la Visitation, Thonon-les-Bains, France
"Art Essai, 2014-2020", catalog, dir. John Cornu, Ed. Art Essai - Université Rennes 2; cultureclub-studio, Rennes, France
"Des mondes saturés", dir. Damien Bonnec and Charlotte Beaufort, « Le risque de la boue » by Claire Chesnier, Presse Universitaire de Rennes, France
"L’horizon d’un instant", Pierre Cendors and Claire Chesnier, Ed. L’Atelier contemporain, Strasbourg, France
2022
The Art Newspaper, May, L’objet de …, « Arnaud Laporte choisit 130221/140221 de Claire Chesnier » by Arnaud Laporte
Art Press n°497, March, « Claire Chesnier/Denis Laget - mudhoney » , by Julie Chaizemartin
Beaux-Arts Magazine, January 2022, « Claire Chesnier : traverser la couleur », by Maïlys Celeux-Lanval
L’Oeil, January, « Claire Chesnier, Denis Laget - en galerie » by Vincent Delaury
Télérama, February 14th, « Peinture : les 8 expositions à ne pas rater à Paris », Expo TTT, by Laurent Boudier
Revue Transfuge, January, « L’équilibre de la boue », by Aude de Bourbon Parme
2021
France Culture, November 10th, « Claire Chesnier », interview with Arnaud Laporte
« Une présence autre », exhibition text "Par espacements et par apparitions", L’Ahah, Paris, by Pierre Wat
Mediapart, December, « Claire Chesnier, la peinture révélée » by Guillaume Lasserre
Art Press, n°485 February, File « La Dé-Définition de l’abstraction », « Dialogue avec Claire Colin-Collin »
Art Press n°484 January, « The Painting People - Atelier Michael Woolworth Paris », by Erik Verhagen, Art District Radio, « A l’atelier #7 : avec la peintre Claire Chesnier », interview with Julie Chaizemartin, Les Apparences, episode 19, « Claire Chesnier », available on YouTube, interview with Thomas Levy-Lasne
Arts Hebdo Medias, October, « Claire Chesnier, Par espacements et par apparitions » by Vanessa Humphries
Paris Capitale, October, « Claire Chesnier, L’Ahah #Griset » by Anne Kerner
Slash, November, « Claire Chesnier, L’Ahah Griset, Paris » by Guillaume Benoit
Paris Update, November, « Art Angels » by Heidi Ellison
Les Pas perdus, « L’espace de la chute (Claire Chesnier, encore) » by Jeremy Liron
2023
Interview with Philippe Piguet, exposition Les Jours, Chapelle de la Visitation, Thonon-les-Bains, France
2021
Interview with Maylis de Kerangal, L’Ahah, Cité Griset, Paris, France
A quoi tient la beauté des étreintes, table ronde avec Zrinka Stahuljak, Gaspar Claus, Jean-Charles Vergne, L’Ahah, Paris, France
Table ronde Art Press, La Dé-Définition de l’abstraction, with Romain Mathieu, Karim Ghaddab, Claire Colin-Collin, L’Ahah, Paris, France
Conférence Art Press, L’abstraction, with Romain Mathieu, Karim Ghaddab, Claire Colin-Collin, ESAD, Saint-Étienne, France
Interview with Claire Colin-Collin on abstraction, on the Art Press dossier (n°485), L’Ahah, Cité Griset, Paris, France
2020
L’oeuvre en question, interview with Vincent Dulom, available on YouTube, L’Ahah, Cité Griset, Paris, France
2019
Vitalité de la peinture, on Invitation by Thomas Lévy-Lasne, Villa Médicis, Rome, Italy
La peinture abstraite, on Invitation by Thomas Isabelle de Maison Rouge, les Dits de l’Art, Cabinet Danton, Paris, France
2018
Presentation of n°23 of Recherches en esthétique, Interview with Mathieu François du Bertrand, L’Harmattan, Paris, France
Invited lecture by Isabelle de Maison Rouge, les Dits de l’Art, Cinéma l’Arlequin, Paris, France
2017
Invited lecture by John Cornu pour l’Université Rennes 2, FRAC Bretagne, Rennes, France
2016
Peindre n’est (ce) pas teindre? Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, Musée de la toile de Jouy, Jouy-en-Josas, France
2013
Rencontre des acteurs du marché de l’art : l’artiste, l’oeuvre et les autres, organized by the Syndicat National des Maisons de Ventes Volontaires (SYMEV) and the Jeune Création association, Mairie du 11ème, Paris, France
2012
La peinture abstraite aujourd’hui, with Pierre Wat and Emmanuel Van der Meulen, Galerie du jour agnès b., Paris, France
2010
Apparition Disparition, on invitation by Vincent Dulom, La Fabrique, Université Toulouse II Le Mirail, Toulouse, France