NUIT SOLAIRE: IRINA RASQUINET

Irina Rasquinet designed this installation as an oneiric walk. An initiatory journey, where heaven and earth are in constant dialogue. Through this work, the artist summons the senses to lend substance to the invisible. As soon as you take your first steps, a fragrance designed by Julien Rasquinet opens up an unconscious space. To breathe is to reach elsewhere. The artist's intention is to cast a spell and create confusion. Is it a dream that opens up or a reality that falls asleep? "I'm in search of a visual oxymoron," she confides.

Paper-feathered birds prowl among the branches of a forest. Nothing of the fluffy softness; bristling up, they're ready to take flight. The same goes for fragrant wisps, made to gravitate freely. Before any image, they set the scene. Enchanted bestiary or mirage? You have to move forward, between the reassuring blue of the Mères Veilleuses ('- watchful mothers', revisited matriochkas) and the sparkling silence of the branches, to find yourself draped in light. "I wanted to catch rainbows, says Irina Rasquinet, like a child closes his fist on the iridescent air."

The eye wanders, the heart guides. Thirty branches, covered with crystals and a thousand ladybugs, hesitate between luck and fear. Beneath the red, are they still wood? Each one stands upright, "like those trees that soar proudly towards the sky, right in the middle of the buildings". We step further into the white. Alchemy of the gaze, the inert is adorned with a thousand reflections. Science tells us that white embodies the sum of light's wavelengths. It is none other than the fusion of all the colors of the rainbow. This is the secret behind Irina Rasquinet's 'trinity of energy'. Mystery, nature and the sacred in a crucible. So we close our eyes to retain the world of chimeras, in the black that has become white.