Sleds of light. Chiaroscuro, ambivalence, energy…words that serve as keys to enter Alain Quesnel’s work. A practice that interrogates, surprises, but cannot leave one indifferent, for it speaks to us even before we grasp it at first glance—of energy, of duality, of balance. What matters most is to take the time. The approach to the work will unfold in silence, for within confrontation lies the exchange and the mystery. The mystery of burned or polished carts, refined to the perfection of time’s wear, bearing the papier-mâché plate that stands as a grisaille, a tomb for forgotten words and a repository of memory. The faint glow of electrical filaments—energy and breath of life at the heart of the work—scatters into a thousand reflections upon shards of glass plates playing with their transparency.
Are these « Sleds of Light » the image of recumbent effigies, or the idea of travel, of movement ? Each will find their own meaning in this duality. Light stands at the core of the work—flickering, fragile, yet full of hope, through its indispensable flow of energy, necessary for life.
The materials used are never arbitrary; they are chosen for their transformative potential and ambivalence—charcoal (warmth and destruction), cotton (purity and wound), glass (transparency and fracture). Duality exists also in this idea of chiaroscuro—a constant presence in Alain Quesnel’s work. It evokes the landscapes of the far north and Canada, where deep black earth surfaces in spring, opposing the immaculate plaques, remnants of winter’s snow. He has stayed there and once said : “The further north I traveled, the more color disappeared from my painting.”
Painting—this is indeed what it is about, not an installation or a sculpture. It is, in fact, a three-dimensional painting with a singular, exclusive angle of vision: “It is only about frontality, nothing else.”
But to conclude, let us allow Alain Quesnel to speak : « These large carts, constructions of charred wood, loaded with various materials—acting alternately as inducers and conductors—are central to my work, already produced in different sizes, in various locations, with diverse materials. The cart represents the nomadic object par excellence. And while it contains within it an entire space through its contents, it also symbolizes, through its virtual movement, an opening to the external world. »
Françoise Plessis – Exposition Chantier d’Artistes – CRDC Espace Graslin – Nantes – 1994