Take the real, remove all it does not need. What remains? The essence: which makes a being or a thing to be what they are. Its this quest of essence which confers to Robert Quenillet's works this absolute character and universal.

Absolute since there is nothing beyond: in his creations , the real offers itself to our sight, to our touch, naked, rough, without artifice nor dissimulation. And even when the essential is absent, the totality of the work converges toward him and confers him a virtual presence. Sans les Mains ( without hands) is the most perfect expression. By not showing what he means to mean, by not sculpturing the object but all around the object, he offers in iconoclast, a hollow configuration where essential is suggested.

Universal for each work, though singular, goes beyond itself: there is all China in this stainless steel Chinese . Its as if fastness of this metal permitted essence fastness of the chinese. Take his hands out of his pockets, lengthen is neck, draw him a smile and you loose China. No more. No less. Just essence.

Of essence its still question in Naissance d'une différence ( Birth of a difference) where the artist has captured the instant of individuation: the moment when at arm length, the mother looks at what was the instant before, was part of herself and that, from now on, is another individual. Whole essence of creation is there: the same does not create an other himself.