Completed in 2002, Nelson is the second piece in a series created using a technique which immediately sets it apart from the rest of Alain Declercq's production. Instinct de mort, the first work of this series, denounced the state crime of the Mesrine affair by inscribing the title of the victim's autobiography on a wooden wall using 2000 bullets shot at point blank by a police officer, an inside player in the assassination of the French outlaw. For Nelson, the artist returned to this technique and took inspiration from the battle of Trafalgar, replaying the strategic heart of the naval assault. In this work more than 30,000 rifle bullets have been shot clean through an 8-meter long white wall.

The third element of this series, colored with a heavy dose of politics, is Rest in Peace, which appears as a rereading of an icon, the emblem of the U.S. Department of Defense, stigmatized by 3000 shots from a .22 rifle.

Each of these works is marked by the ambivalence which characterizes the artist's work: on one side a clean and careful image made by the powerful and precise bullets; on the other the raw, scattered and destructive violence of the impacts.

The artist's signature is indeed revealed in the piercing clarity and the immediacy of his works, but also in their inherent complexity. The artist accumulates different levels of reading in each work. The quasi-romantic vision of these great warships almost leads us to forget that the image is drawn using bullets and that the scene is indeed the scene of murder. An artistic choice which reveals, as usual, a majestic and gripping version with a force which is both relentless and fragile. For an instant, the beauty of this surface absorbs the gravity of the technical gesture: we gaze with our eyes wide open, even as we stand precisely in the line of fire... Florise Pagès