In Sesto Prize

Quentin Lefranc

(Tours, 1987)

The focus of Lefranc’s study and research is space, a form of architecture which serves as a structure and a playground where the work inserted creates a dialogue between the place and what materialises in it. Lefranc assembles scenographies that bring together sculpture, painting and architecture. These decompose, transform and recompose the space in a new and unprecedented relationship that involves the visitors, asking for their own perception of the work. Lefranc deals with art, architecture, music and cinema; in fact, Pasolini’s films are constant references in his works.
In this room, Lefranc exhibits Teorema (2022): on the floor, three prints are arranged that are taken from a sequence of the 1968 eponymous film, where young Odette measures with precision and humorism the space that divides her and her guest, the past. Lefranc marks a distance and repeats the scene by replaying the images. The lines, which cut through the floor and weave the three triangles together, dissolve the space’s continuity and encourage the viewer to experiment with a new approach to the work of art, to pass through the empty space freely and to observe the place from a different perspective. The artist halts time, erases what is superfluous, and keeps the picture’s components while leaving a trace of the past in the background, which will define future trajectories by disordering space and time.

Quentin Lefranc’s project

Un pas chasse l’autre (one step chases the other)

For Piazza IV November, Lefranc presents an installation with a horizontal extension at ground level. The artist looks at Pasolini’s cinematographic production by observing how, especially in the films of the ‘60s, the author can create a space-time distortion. The starting point for this project, the same one as the works Sculpture continue (2017) and D’un bout à l’autre (2019), is some precise sequences from the film Teorema (1968). These are images of the dance steps performed by the protagonist Odette that measure the empty space, a square, the physical appropriation of a specific place, one of its depictions, the video camera’s movement and the eye of the viewer immersed in an intricate and festive voyage. It is from these shots that Lefranc imagined, for this square, a minimal sculptural work where the distinct picture of the steps has been isolated and then inserted into the space, not by chance but according to a specific trajectory which swings between continuity and discontinuity, suspense and breakage, order and chaos, precision and intricate movement. Lefranc transforms sculpture into an open system that you have to go through, tread on and traverse.

Quentin Lefranc (Tours, 1987) lives and works in Paris. He graduated from the art school of Rueil-Malmaison and later studied at the Paris School of Decorative Arts. Nowadays, he is a young figurative artist. His artistic research elevates architecture as a place of study where structures, surroundings and playgrounds are the foundation of his works. By assembly or juxtaposition, Lefranc intertwines all the sculpture’s parts of the installation, questions all the distinctive characteristics that create it, and plays with their history and attribution creating a dialogue between the space and what materializes within.

Quentin Lefranc, Un pas chasse l’autre, 2022
(rendering) engraving on aluminium plate
30 ø x 0,06 cm

Quentin Lefranc, Un pas chasse l’autre, 2022
(rendering) engraving on aluminium plate
30 ø x 0,06 cm

Quentin Lefranc, Un pas chasse l’autre, 2022
(rendering) engraving on aluminium plate
30 ø x 0,06 cm

Quentin Lefranc, Un pas chasse l’autre, 2022
(rendering) engraving on aluminium plate
30 ø x 0,06 cm