Christelle Franc
Born in 1974
Lives and works in Saint-Etienne
“My activity is developing in books and ensembles, counterparts of those books, which I compose. With paper as the main material, I am developing a certain language made of words and figures.
In books, I make different variations: I place photographs, reproductions of artworks, extracts from literary texts, and lists of words drawn up on the basis of dictionary definitions. I then rework the lists on panels with precise configurations, interweaving and dovetailing many different figures, remakes of images glued in the books.
This is my complete aim: considering and assembling what is fragment and chance in a single thing. We do not get away from the sign, any more than we do from language. It is a matter of being situated in language, passing through it, and making an inventive and active use of it.
A time-frame peculiar to the book tallies with another living space, with the panels. In a continuous movement, I open up, in the surface of the paper, small windows which let words appear. These cut-outs, peppered with light in the layers of overlaid paper, animate the space with a rhythm—with a beat--, with, around and through the figures.
Each ensemble is an invitation to take a look which is at once contemplative and creative.“
Christelle Franc, 2014
Translated by Simon Pleasance, 2015