THE 333 PROJECT

A living exploration of value, vulnerability, and artistic release.
By Quentin Chamard-Bois

Concept Overview

THE 333 Project is an ongoing public art intervention by French artist and photographer Quentin Chamard-Bois, built around one essential gesture: letting go.

At the heart of the project is Quentin's visual and conceptual practice, rooted in abstraction, ambiguity, and sensory fluidity. His work is born from a blend of photography and performative installation: using multiple exposures, he photographs paintings, fabrics, and colored filters as they interact with wind and light. The resulting images blur the lines between mediums. The viewer is often left uncertain — is it a photograph or a painting? — and that uncertainty is key. His practice creates a moment of visual surrender, inviting a direct emotional connection unmediated by narrative or context.

This search for lâcher-prise extends beyond image-making and into the act of presentation itself. In each edition of the 333 Project, artworks are abandoned into the public space — unprotected, unsigned on the front, and freely available to those who encounter them. Each piece is paired with a sealed certificate of authenticity, and most importantly, a QR code on the reverse, offering the possibility for the finder to share their emotions, thoughts, or reflections directly with the artist. This creates an open, participatory dialogue — the artwork does not end at the street corner. It continues in the mind, in the gesture, and in the exchange.

The project began in Paris in October 2023: for 30 consecutive days, Chamard-Bois released 11 works per day, culminating in 333 unique pieces placed throughout the city. This foundational gesture laid the conceptual and numerical framework for the broader, evolving project.

Each edition is a new variation on this core score — a spatial, emotional, and aesthetic score — unfolding differently depending on the city's architecture, people, and rhythm.

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 Editions 

Paris (October 2023)
→ 30 days × 11 artworks per day = 333 artworks abandoned across the city.
The original edition that seeded the project, blending intimate abstraction with public action.

 New York (April 2025)

→ 3 days × 11 artworks per day = 33 works→ Each artwork was discreetly observed by a hidden camera, recording real-time interactions with passersby.→ A cinematic expansion of the project: the street as stage, the viewer as protagonist.

Project 55 (December 2025)
→ Five identical boxes, each with 11 artworks, sent to five continents.
→ Each participant chooses one piece and passes the box on within 48 hours.
→ Each selection is documented via QR code, connecting strangers who chose the same piece across the globe.

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Future chapters — 77, 111, and beyond — will extend the project further, embracing new materials, geographies, and forms of public intimacy.

Core Elements

Artistic Practice / Abstraction as Gesture

The 333 Project is deeply connected to Quentin Chamard-Bois's process-based, abstract visual language. His works are constructed through layers of exposure, documenting paintings, textiles, and translucent surfaces shaped by natural forces such as light and air. He works with materials rather than on them, allowing randomness and fragility to be part of the visual field. This practice is itself a form of release — letting go of control and embracing unpredictability. The visual ambiguity of the final artworks (photograph? painting? illusion?) mirrors the philosophical ambiguity of the project itself.

 Possession / Dispossession

The project questions traditional relationships between artists, audiences, and the art market. What does it mean to give something away with no conditions? To make the value of an artwork dependent not on price or prestige, but on the willingness to take a chance?

The works are easy to remove from their place — but doing so requires emotional decision. That hesitation is part of the piece.

 Value / Fragility

Each piece is deliberately exposed to time, weather, pollution, and chance. In contrast, the certificate of authenticity is protected — a sealed object that elevates the otherwise vulnerable print. This inversion highlights how value is socially constructed, and often disconnected from material fragility.

 Authorship / Audience / Interaction

The project invites the public to become co-creators. A passerby’s choice — to take, ignore, or reflect — becomes part of the artwork’s life. Through the QR code, each person can leave a testimony, an emotion, a reflection, feeding a growing archive of responses that transforms the project into a collective map of emotional encounters with art in the wild.

The artist becomes a listener, not just a maker.