Biographical Data

Born in Fontenay-aux-Roses, near Paris, in 1965. She lives and works in Paris. Claire-Jeanne Jézéquel studies at the Fine arts school in Grenoble (1983-1985), at Villa Arson in Nice (1985-1988) and at the Institut des Hautes Études en Arts Plastiques in París (1988-1989). Her first individual exhibition takes place in 1990. At present she is a teacher at the École des Beaux-Arts in Nantes.

Brief Chronology

In the early 90’s, Claire-Jeanne Jézéquel creates sculptures using simple materials –chipboard and plywood– that she cuts, fits, bends, superposes, imbricates. She conceives her abstract sculptures as “a way of building a space similar to the way we have of building our living spaces”. She spreads them out, elevates them, balances them on wooden easels (where they may or may not fall down), and sometimes leans them on walls. Her sculptures are embedded with lines of white mastic. She says this way she sets them at “a distance, in the limits of the space that takes them in. Set on the wall they lose tactility, to get only the eyes attention. Set on the floor they escape physical apprehension to be seen from above. The eye prevails, the eye as the organ to touch distance”. In 2003 she works in Prises uniques, mural pieces that absorb her fingerprints on painted earth and in Casting and Pseudo-Casting in cast aluminium or chipboard and painted plaster that give shape to spaces, evoke landscapes, inspire themselves in the city’s cartography.In 2006, her monumental sculpture Le Balcon (pour longtemps regarder) is set on the Ivry-sur-Seine port, near Paris. In recent years, she hangs from the wall or sets on the floor shapes made with cast aluminium, chipboard or lacquered surfaces (Savoir s’étendre, (or), 2007). In 2009 she presents the series Sketch: pieces set on the floor on metal rails that seem to open a new dialogue with the history of painting and abstraction: “Often abstract pieces are critizised, a bit naively, for not belonging to the world. But it is stating the possibility of an alterity, of a not identical being, leaving behind identity or social assignments, and narcissist weariness, that a concrete art is inscribed in its relation with the world.” Claire-Jeanne Jézéquel make also drawings.

P.L.T.

Sketch 1, 2009, Graphite and wax on plaster sheet, metallic rails, 26 x 270 x 133 cm / 10,23 x 106,29 x 52,36 inch