Alice Cuenot

Capirona
Acrylic on canvas
65 x 61 cm

Alice Cuenot

Rejection is an integral part of the job.
I remember once, in line to enter a night club in Paris, during a discussion with a stranger, I showed him my work on my phone. He told me he didn’t like it. That time, I felt that I was indifferent to his opinion, because I know my work, I know the meaning it has for me, I know its potential. And I know that not exposing myself to rejection is preventing my work from existing. Rejection is like proof of existence.

I also know how to use what precedes rejection as a strength, the work of putting together a file, of imagining works, of writing new texts… this work remains, and becomes available to other eyes.
I think that every work must find the eye that will know how to see it. I often think of that when I do a work that I myself reject. Maybe someone else would find what they need there.

And then, in a capitalist and suffering world, I understand that certain things evoked in my paintings are inaccessible or uninteresting, incomprehensible. I don’t do it to do or to be fashionable. I do what I think is visually necessary, liberating, restorative.

– Alice Cuenot

Drawing inspiration from personal loss and the concept of healing, Alice Cuenot’s “Capirona” is a poignant exploration of reparation and liminality. Through her acrylic on canvas, Cuenot channels her thematic focus on the in-between states of being, creating portals to an alternative universe where animal spirits and natural elements are protectors and guides.

Alice, a graduate of the École Supérieure d’Art d’Avignon, embeds her work with a sense of otherworldliness, inviting the viewer to step into a realm that reconciles the corporeal with the ethereal. Her work, including “Capirona,” portrays the cycle of deconstruction and reconstruction, echoing the resilience of nature and the human spirit. The unframed canvas enhances the raw and organic essence of her subject matter, further blurring the lines between the artwork and the viewer’s space.

In the context of art history, Cuenot’s work resonates with the expressive potential of acrylics, harking back to the fluidity and intensity of the medium popularized in the post-war era. Her unframed pieces, such as “Capirona,” sit at the crossroads of vulnerability and strength, encapsulating the Salon de Refusées’ ethos by embodying the beauty that emerges from rejection and resilience.

The theme of the Salon des Refusées is political, funny and restorative, and embodies a necessary rebellion in these disillusioned times.
My wish would be to reach an audience more attentive to its own sensitivity, since for once no one else dictated for them what was art and what was not. The public is there as an explorer.
I think that the exhibition space, a meeting place between art and people, is a place which should help to melt the frost which surrounds our hearts by allowing strangeness, dreams, shifts, struggles.

– Alice Cuenot