Quentin Lefranc
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Space as experience
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Quentin Lefranc / Photo: Eloise Kelsey
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There are works that reveal themselves immediately to the eye, and others that require time. Quentin Lefranc’s sculptures and installations belong to the latter category. Their visual language is remarkably restrained: a few lines, industrial materials, plays of transparency, structures that seem almost silent. Yet behind this apparent simplicity unfolds a complex reflection on space, the body, and perception.
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What particularly resonates with me in his work is a quality I would readily describe as sfumato. Not in its painterly sense, but as a way of making boundaries porous. The distinctions between inside and outside, presence and absence, sculpture and architecture become uncertain. His works do not seek to impose an image; instead, they invite the viewer’s gaze to wander, hesitate, and gradually discover what unfolds through their transparencies, reflections, and subtle shifts.
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Born in 1987, Quentin Lefranc lives and works in Paris. He graduated from the École d’Art de Rueil-Malmaison in 2011 and from the École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs de Paris in 2013. Today, he develops his practice through sculpture and installation, with a particular focus on form, spatial structures, and the conditions of perception.
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Although not an architect, Quentin Lefranc maintains a profound relationship with architecture – not as a discipline of construction, but as a field of inquiry into the ways we inhabit, move through, and experience space. Architectural forms, urban frameworks, and the structures that shape our everyday environment become, for him, subjects of observation and transformation.
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His works invite the viewer to undergo an experience rather than simply observe an object. Labyrinths, modular structures, reflective and transparent surfaces create situations in which the body, time, and space become the true materials of the work.
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In this interview, Quentin Lefranc reflects on the development of his artistic journey, the experiences that have transformed his practice, his relationship to form and materials, and the question that continues to guide his research: how can a minimal form open up a mental and sensory space infinitely larger than itself?
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Model: frosted glass, aluminum, steel wire, silver gelatin photograph, private collection, 2018
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Julia Palmeirao: We often speak of an artistic vocation, yet creative paths are rarely linear. Could you tell us how yours took shape? Did you grow up in an artistic environment, or did your interest in art develop later, through your experiences?
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Quentin Lefranc: Not at all. I didn’t grow up in an artistic environment. Initially, I was more interested in architecture. In fact, I completed an internship at an architectural practice, and it was there that I discovered I had a certain sensitivity. That experience naturally led me to pursue studies at art school.
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At first, I worked primarily with painting. But the people mentoring me pointed out that what truly interested me was space. Even through painting, I was already trying to move beyond the surface of the canvas.
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In the end, it was through painting that I returned to space, and gradually to sculpture and installation. In truth, architecture has never ceased to be present in my work. I have always looked closely at architectural forms and questions, and they have become an essential part of my practice.
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Granulations. Model : Plaster, chalk, 2018 (in the background: the wallpainting “painting witnesses”)
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J.P.: If you had to identify the defining moments in your artistic journey – the ones that truly transformed the way you think and work – which would you choose?
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Q.L.: An artistic journey is rarely straightforward. It’s a winding path, marked by many unexpected turns, each of which plays an important role. Looking back, however, two moments stand out as particularly significant.
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The first came while I was still a student, through a research workshop at the French National Centre for Visual Arts (Cnap). I was studying how the institution functions, particularly the way artworks exist within its collection.
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Through conversations with the people who worked there, I discovered something that had a profound impact on me: even when certain artworks are considered lost, they continue to exist legally and administratively through their inventory number. They retain a form of existence despite their physical absence. At the same time, another event caught my attention within the institution itself: the relocation of the collections inventory department. Once the department moved, the spaces it had previously occupied were left empty. It created a striking paradox: on the one hand, artworks that were absent or had disappeared; on the other, empty spaces left behind by those responsible for documenting and searching for them.
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From this reflection, I proposed retracing the history of several missing works that I had selected from the inventory. That research became foundational for me. It led me to question what an artwork actually is, how it exists over time, and what happens when it disappears. It was also a way of moving beyond the framework of art school and understanding the artwork as something that continues to evolve beyond its material presence.
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The second defining moment was a residency at La Salle Blanche, a company specializing in the design of sterile environments for the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries, particularly operating theatres.
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The company’s president invited me to develop a residency centered on these spaces dedicated to caring for the body. She wanted us to reflect on how space might contribute to supporting patients, and on the role that architecture and environment play in the experience of hospitals and healthcare.
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During the residency, I worked closely with the company’s staff as well as professionals from the healthcare sector. The project came to an end during the Covid pandemic, which inevitably brought many things to a halt. Nevertheless, we eventually realized a work together, drawing on the company’s technical expertise: a labyrinth constructed from materials used in laboratory clean-room environments.
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This experience allowed me to move beyond the solitary process of making work in the studio. It brought me into contact with other professions, other forms of expertise, and ways of thinking that do not necessarily come from the art world. It showed me the importance of engaging with these spaces of dialogue and of continually expanding my practice.
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No Image Announces Its Disappearance (2017) / Poster, digital print on paper / 60 × 42 cm / Graphic design: Marine Jézéquel
Action Office (2021) (pp. 47, 134–135, 136) / Aluminum frame, HPL laminate, approx. 150 × 600 × 600 cm. / Produced by LSB (La Salle Blanche) for the second edition of the Saint-Paul de Vence Biennale.
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J.P.: The motif of the labyrinth recurs throughout your work. What draws you to this form, and what kinds of questions does it allow you to explore?
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Q.L.: First and foremost, the labyrinth is a space. It implies a destination, movement, a relationship to time, and a path traced by the body. What interests me is this physical experience of space: moving forward, searching, sometimes getting lost, and remaining constantly in dialogue with one’s surroundings.
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But the labyrinth is also a way of thinking. It functions as an allegory for inquiry – a symbol of thought in perpetual motion. From a single gesture, from a relatively simple structure, it can generate something far more complex.
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It is precisely this relationship between simplicity and complexity that fascinates me. A minimal form can contain multiple experiences of time, space, and the body that moves through it.
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I also appreciate the way the labyrinth challenges the distinction between inside and outside. You are never entirely certain where you stand: you are simultaneously within it and in constant relation to what surrounds you.
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Des-Tours, 2021
Diary is an attempt to occupy a space, day after day. Through-dyed MDF, paper, ink, graphite, 102 × 110 cm, 2020.
Steel, cotton, variable dimensions, 2021.
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Photo: Eloise Kelsey
Criticité, installation view of the exhibition Là, QG Gallery, Brussels, 2026 (courtesy of QG Gallery)
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J.P.: What informs your way of looking on a daily basis? Where do the influences that run through your work come from?
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Q.L.: I think my influences are very diverse. They come as much from everyday life as from art history. A conversation like the one we are having now can feed a line of thought, just as an experience in public space, a walk through the city, or the observation of a detail of urban furniture, a bollard, a pavement, or an architectural structure can. I am very attentive to all these elements that make up our environment.
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Of course, I also look closely at the work of artists and sculptors. But what interests me is not only the works themselves or the individuals behind them. What I am really interested in is the circulation of forms.
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How can the same form reappear in different periods, in very different contexts, carrying a new meaning each time? How are certain formal vocabularies passed on, reinterpreted, sometimes appropriated or diverted?
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Ultimately, what fascinates me is less the influence of any particular artist than the way forms travel, transform themselves, and continue to produce meaning according to the contexts in which they emerge.
And to finish, begin all over again!, Lambert Collection in Avignon, 2022 (collection of the Musée de Grenoble)
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J.P.: I would like to return to Around Nothing (2019–2023), which I discovered at the Offscreen art fair, presented in the Saint-Louis Chapel of La Salpêtrière. I was struck by the symbolic power the work acquired within this historically charged space. How did this encounter between the work and the architecture come about?
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Q.L.: When I was invited to participate in Offscreen and discovered the history of the Saint-Louis Chapel at La Salpêtrière, it seemed quite obvious to me that Around Nothing was the work that needed to be presented in that space.
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The work already existed, but the chapel gave it a different resonance from the one it had at the Fondation Suisse, beneath Le Corbusier’s building. I then began researching the history of the site, particularly the period when La Salpêtrière was used to confine women considered “undesirable.” Unfortunately, a large part of the archives had been destroyed.
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Through my research, I discovered that the dimensions of the sculpture corresponded to those of the former cells in which these women had been confined. This coincidence profoundly changed my perception of the work.
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Around Nothing bears the imprints of my own body—that of a man. Presented in a space marked by the confinement of women, it opened up an unexpected dialogue between two histories. It was not a work conceived specifically for this site, but its encounter with the memory of the chapel gave it another dimension. It is precisely this shift in meaning that interests me: a work is never completely fixed; it continues to transform itself through its encounters with the places in which it is exhibited.
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Around Nothing (2019–2023) / Installation view of the exhibition at the Fondation Suisse (2023) / Glass, vinyl, and aluminum / 170 × 220 × 165 cm.
Around Nothing (2019–2023) / Offscreen, La Salpêtrière (2025) / Glass, vinyl, and aluminum / 170 × 220 × 165 cm.
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J.P.: One notices that colour is very rarely present directly in your work. Is this a choice related to the materials you use, or rather a way of allowing colour to emerge from the surrounding space?
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Q.L.: It is true that there are very few colours that appear directly in my work. I often use materials such as stainless steel or aluminum—raw materials that possess their own qualities: they can be mirrored, reflective, and sometimes slightly transparent.
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What interests me is precisely not applying colour to the materials, but allowing them to capture the colours that already exist around them. Through certain surface treatments, such as satin finishing, I seek to alter their reflective qualities so that they can receive and absorb the colours of the space in which they are installed.
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This choice allows me not to impose a colour on the space, but rather to work with it. The artwork thus enters into a relationship with its environment: it absorbs variations in light, the colours of the walls, and the presences that surround it. Ultimately, it is not an absence of colour, but another way of allowing colour to appear. It does not come from the work itself; it emerges through its encounter with the site.
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Proposal for an outdoor site: 7 elements, stainless steel, reflective glass, 2018–2022. View of the Montfaucon courtyard – Lambert Collection in Avignon.
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J.P.: When I look at your works, I often have the feeling of a presence that could disappear, as if the forms were permeated by an idea of absence or fragility. Is this a dimension you consciously seek in your work?
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Q.L.: I might not describe it directly in terms of disappearance. What interests me more is a kind of energy, something that remains in motion, like a presence that is never completely fixed. If we consider, for example, certain ideas found in Japanese architecture, space is often conceived as an empty envelope, a structure that gives an important place to emptiness. This emptiness is not an absence, but rather a space of possibilities, something that allows things to exist and evolve.
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There is indeed a relationship in my work to emptiness, disappearance, and time, but it is not about the idea of a definitive disappearance. It is more a way of working with what escapes, with what is constantly transforming, existing between presence and absence.
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PMMA, 85 x 110 x 80 cm, 2021
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Studio view, sculpture in progress.
Autoritratto. Offscreen, La Salpêtrière (2025)