Yann Kersalé

[1][2] Beginning in 1984 at the Société métallurgique in Caen,[1] he has produced architectural illuminations of both natural environments and buildings that have given rise to a school of modern French light art.

[3] He has worked with Helmut Jahn on the Sony Center in Berlin and the Bangkok and Chicago O'Hare airports and with Jean Nouvel on the Lyon Opera House, the Torre Agbar in Barcelona, the Musée du quai Branly, the Philharmonie concert hall in Paris, and the Abu Dhabi branch of the Louvre Museum.

[12] In 2011, a reviewer in Le Figaro called him "a passionate fan of chiaroscuro" who loves to plunge viewers into an "abyss" of total darkness to maximise their perception of the surprising narrative fantasies he constructs with light.

[13] He regards his work for cities as a form of urban renewal, reclaiming areas where people can stroll safely at night, and saving industrial artifacts that might otherwise be destroyed.

[5] For example, his lighting of the boat lifts at Thieu, Belgium, led to their preservation and the creation of a tourist promenade,[14] and his project at the submarine base in Saint-Nazaire transformed a liability that was to have been demolished into a civic asset.