When we are looking at Claire-Jeanne Jézéquel’s work we are located between painting and sculpture, sculpture and architecture. “We are never in the landscape we contemplate”. Her sculptures help us understand the illusion of painting. They are drawings that come out of the wall; a horizon of imaginary spaces.
They are leading us to systematic conscious understanding of body and space while radically altering the perception of the site where we are located. The landscape addresses the eye. It is a mental image, a point from which we perceive an immeasurable space. Claire-Jeanne Jézéquel’s always uses simple and easily identifiable materials. Flexible plywood, used since 1998, has been abandoned for materials such as melted aluminum, used since 2002 as for her exhibition at the Fernand Léger gallery and the Enghien-les-Bains biennial, and most recently fiberboard, a material related to painting. Fiberboards are torn apart, each piece is covered with car paint whose finishing contrasts with the torn edges left rough. Claire-Jeanne Jézéquel, positions here and there puddles of paint on the lacquered surfaces, like fixed magma. The ensemble resting upon barely elevated trestles seems like some sort of expectation.
For her new solo show at Xippas Gallery, Claire-Jeanne Jézéquel presents a series of small wall pieces called Prises Uniques. Small volumes are lined up on a steel plate. They correspond to an elementary gesture. They represent the quantity of earth the artist can hold at any single take. They maintain the random imprint of the finger but are covered with a precious pearlescent lacquer in cosmetic hues.
Claire-Jeanne Jézéquel was born in France in 1965. She lives and works in Paris.
The Strasbourg Chaufferie gave her a solo show under the title “S’il est possible de commparer les petites choses aux grandes” (If it is possible to compare small things to big ones) that ended August 31st, 2004. In 2001 she was laureate of the Scholarship of Monumental Art of the city of Ivry-sur-Seine. The commissioned by the city of Ivry-sur-Seine will be installed on the embankment of the Seine in the near future. A monograph on her work will be published in 2005 by Xippas Gallery in collaboration with the Chaufferie.
