Yann Kersalé

Born in 1955 and a graduate of the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Quimper, Yann Kersalé is a conceptual artist who uses light as others use clay or paint, and he has chosen the night as his canvas. Since then, with extraordinary creative vitality, Yann Kersalé has developed more than a hundred In Situ and Light-Expedition projects: a luminous encephalogram of the ocean, the reinterpretation of high-tech objects, work on engineering structures and legendary architecture.

The most prestigious architects call upon his talents, including Jean Nouvel, for whom he designed the red lighting for the glass roof of the Lyon Opera, the lighting for the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris, and the Agbar Tower in Barcelona. Fiercely opposed to the harsh artificial lighting that disfigures landmarks, he creates "luminous fictions, a narrative work on the spirit and memory of cities", with projects in Nantes, Rennes or for the port facilities in Saint-Nazaire.

This work naturally involves inventing new lighting concepts, objets-lumière, and lightweight objects that play with scansion and appearance; poetic projects with multiple influences, in which Yann Kersalé's spirit of freedom and provocation is always evident. Among others, his agency has created lighting architecture for the Grand Place in Brussels as part of the European Cultural Season, designed lighting for the Docks de Paris with Jakob and Mac Farlane, and Copenhagen Opera, and developed the art direction for Jean Nouvel's Abu Dhabi Louvre.