These latest works need to be perceived as a gesture, a simple gesture, that of pouring materials into the bottom of a frame. The result, this sunken material, can be approached in two contradictory ways: either as a collapse or as an elevation, either as a fall or as an accumulation. These spilled materials come from the studio: plastic beads, sequins, scrap wood or pieces of Plexiglas, gelatin, sand, glass… In a way, Lionel Estève has repurposed them, recycled them here. Surprisingly, we can see that these materials with their acidic colors are almost all made from oil. As they sink, as they fall, they overlap in layers that can be seen through the glass of the frame, as if it were a cup with its sediments, impressions of different times, as if something buried or hidden were being revealed to us. Of course this technique is similar to the popular art that consists in creating images with colored sand in bottles. But these elements, these pearls, these precariously balanced materials, are for the artist more like sculpture rather than images since the key here is mainly the law of gravity.
What is shown seems to be accidental, temporary, unstable, open to revision if the work is moved. Strangely, a work of art has become an object in motion. These constructions question the definition of a work of art as something permanent, controlled, chosen. Here it is a sign of movement, a balance that forms a risky image and could have been quite different.