Image: Galerie Alain Gutharc, Paris
Bernard Quesniaux will present ‘Hotel des définitions’, a solo exhibition of recent paintings, sculptures and drawings, at Galerie Alain Gutharc in Paris from 5 September to 10 October 2026. The exhibition will open on 5 September with a vernissage beginning at 5 p.m., according to the gallery’s announcement.
The presentation brings together several strands of Quesniaux’s practice, which Laurent Buffet describes as moving between figuration and abstraction, drawing and painting, and two-dimensional work and volume. The exhibition text positions this movement between forms not as a linear progression, but as a recurring disruption of expectations about what a painting or sculpture should be.
Buffet writes that Quesniaux’s formal vocabulary can combine figurative and abstract elements, placing finely controlled drawing alongside thick, spreading marks. The works may also incorporate dissonant assemblages made from such materials as fragments of wallpaper, carpet and other found elements. In this account, these shifts are part of an ongoing interrogation of painting’s nature rather than a departure from it.
The new paintings are described as mostly small in format, with an emphasis on thickness and superimposition. Layers of colour and pigment build surfaces in which matte and glossy passages respond to one another. The gallery text presents these works as increasingly focused on pigment, matter, combinations of colour and overlapping layers, while retaining a tension between formal reduction and a more expansive, baroque sensibility.
The exhibition extends that investigation beyond the wall. According to Buffet, some of the paintings become volumes placed on plinths, while combinations of volumes produce totemic forms that suggest the human figure. The body remains a recurring thread in the description of Quesniaux’s work, even as his forms shift between recognizable features and unstable, unexpected shapes.
The accompanying text also characterizes Quesniaux as an artist whose work has been present on the contemporary scene for four decades and who continues to challenge assumptions formed by earlier works. His practice is described as marked by ruptures and changes in vocabulary, with humour and apparent lightness used alongside more serious questions about artistic form and the status of painting.
Galerie Alain Gutharc is located at 7 rue Saint-Claude, Paris 75011. ‘Hotel des définitions’ will remain on view there from 5 September through 10 October 2026.
