Mathilde DENIZE - Artist - Perrotin

French artist Mathilde Denize moves seamlessly between multiple

mediums—from painting to sculpture and installation—to explore the concept

of Gesamtkunstwerk, or “a total work of art,” a notion developed by the

early avant-gardes. The result is a fluid orchestration of disparate materials,

textures and patterns, fluctuating through space to form a harmonious

continuity within interactive, multisensory, poetic and imaginative universes.

In her just-opened show at Perrotin New York, repurposed fragments of

canvases become suspended painterly costumes, evoking the presence

of the body while fostering an interplay between fragmentation and

fluid continuity—between these material presences, the space and the

viewer. On the wall, swaths of pastel colors float across the canvas, their

dynamic ensemble forming new, indecipherable combinations. Purposefully

resisting a final, easily recognizable form, they linger in a nebulous limbo of

transformation and potential change.

“This interplay between mediums creates a fluid exchange between two-

dimensional and three-dimensional realms, allowing the work to transcend

traditional boundaries,” Denize tells Observer during a walkthrough of the

exhibition a few days after the opening. “For me, the work is based on staging

the pieces in space. Having studied theater and worked for a long time

in cinema, I have a strong appreciation for arranging elements in relation

to each other and an obsession with balance. The arrangement happens

gradually as the shapes appear. The idea is to play with the elements and

present a vibrant whole.” 

Like a constellation of cosmic particles assembling into new aesthetic

forms, the colors and atmospheres that traverse Denize’s media become

choreographies of elements animated by a distinct, melodic energy. It is no

coincidence that the show’s title, “Sound of Figures,” conjures this musical

dimension. “I named the exhibition to evoke the feeling that the energy of a

work of art, an object, a sound, a song or a gesture can provoke in each of

us,” says Denize as she moves among her works. “I sought a physical and

poetic sensation that one can feel in front of these strange, carnivalesque,

suspended figures, like a resonance with our own bodies, all different and

sensitive. One can speak of melody in an exhibition; different sounds often

pass through us if we take the time to listen to them, vibratory energies that

nourish thought.”

For her second show with the gallery, Mathilde Denize has transformed

the space into a stage for an overflow of multisensorial inputs that shape

a “permeable atmosphere,” where all the elements appear as part of a

network of interdependencies, amplifying their symbolic and almost totemic

presence. “The exhibition is conceived as a unified whole, where each

element is in dialogue with the others. The motifs present within the paintings

also extend beyond the canvas, taking form in ceramics or being sculpted

directly onto the painted surfaces,” she explains. The elements in the space

invite visitors to engage on a multisensory level, transforming the space

into an interactive environment to train perception, activate sensations and

foster imagination. “By incorporating both flat and sculptural elements, the

installation invites the viewer to explore the relationship between space,

texture and form.”

In particular, the painterly garments hanging from the ceiling dynamically

engage the gallery, already suggesting bodily movement and organic

life within them as they fluctuate, following different rhythms dictated

by the surrounding atmosphere. Many of Denize’s works are conceived

as “wearable” paintings or sculptures that can be activated in elegant

performances. “The activation of the painted costumes was an obvious

answer to the body and its theatricality. Without ever showing the narrative

of the body, I wanted to work with what presence can be, and this is still

what interests me today,” she says. Here, she sought to bring in a little of

the physical, opening up as many possible stories by putting into motion

the fragile scope of a bodily envelope while trying to inject as little fixed

narrative as possible.

In this sense, Denize’s art deeply embraces these concepts, linking her

practice to the legacy of Modernism and abstraction, born from a desire to

envision an entirely new world. Her works reveal a rich set of references and

precedents, primarily tied to early avant-garde research and, in particular,

their theories of integrating disciplines within society to achieve impact

through art. “My sources of inspiration are very diverse, and I can look at

Hilma af Klint, a Lynch film, a painting by a friend, a piece of clothing draped

over a chair—everything is aligned on the same level. What matters is the

universe that is created and the line.”

At the same time, Denize emphasizes how her work proceeds through

intuition, with shapes and colors emerging spontaneously in the process.

“The fact that I don’t choose my colors but instead recycle what I get from

film sets allows me to play even more with my own boundaries,” she says.

“By not selecting pigments, colors and materials, I push away the decisions

I might have made initially, and that’s what I seek—not limiting myself to my

own taste, being surprised, stepping out of a potential domination of good taste or decorative painting.”

More importantly, all the elements in the space share this sensation of

fluidity and hybridity, as if they emerged from random yet divinatory, cross-

disciplinary assemblages—fertile grounds for new meanings. The fluidity

in her painting style produces a flowing materiality, suggesting unstrained

malleability and endless transformative possibilities, qualities equally

embodied in her sculptures.

Everything in the space appears submerged or made of water itself, evoking

continuous movement between states, as if these abstract compositions

remained open to crystallizing into new forms or engaging in new processes

and reactions. “I work with a lot of water, and when the shapes appear, I

follow them and compose with them,” confirms Denize. “Art, for me, is a

game, and the pieces must always be returned to the table. No matter the

medium, as long as it’s pushed to its limits.”

Maintaining a primarily abstract language, her paintings seem not only to

evoke but to procedurally inhabit this marine, aquatic and almost magical

dimension—where fluctuating elements and particles continue searching

for a final shape to archive and evolve.

In what she describes as landscapes, Denize’s “fluid expanses” already

visualize these permeable atmospheres—virtual environs of her canvases

that exist in osmotic dialogue with their surroundings. “I’m not sure I can

speak of a search for pure abstraction focused solely on shapes and colors.

I would rather speak of motifs and signs, a large, watery, fluid puzzle where

the forms could even move from one canvas to another without encountering

major difficulties in forming a new balance.”

Across cultures, myths and spiritual beliefs have framed water as an element

of transformation, purification and adaptation. Water—especially deep

water—often serves as a metaphor for the subconscious: the unknown of

its vast and mysterious abysses, where emotions, memories and hidden

potential reside, only to reemerge when latent images lingering beneath

the surface are freed from self-imposed restraints. For Denize, the artistic

process becomes a dive into these “waters” to tap into something deeper

within the universal subconscious.

shifting energy. The exhibition space itself becomes a site of both physical

and psychological flux, where things are in constant motion, morphing

and interacting in unexpected, exhilarating ways—forming a “vibrant

whole” where intellect and instinct, conscious and subconscious, blend.

“Having studied theater and worked for a long time in cinema, I have a

strong appreciation for arranging elements in relation to each other and an

obsession with balance. The arrangement happens gradually as the shapes

appear.”

The artist’s archaeological repurposing of fragments and leftovers,

recirculating within her studio and process, already suggests a more

sustainable approach to artistic creation. At the same time, this method of

art-making forges compelling links to how our minds process memories

and construct meaning—how the psyche blends existing materials and

knowledge with the continuous influx of new stimuli from the outside

world. “Memory always integrates fragments, scattered pieces, so the

studio becomes a perfect playground to engage with all these layers that

populate our thoughts. Just like when we remember, the work in the studio

is a game of perpetual repositioning,” comments the artist. “The fragments

that populate my work are important because they allow me great freedom

of assembly. A decision is crucial when joining pieces together—it’s an

attempt at creation. But afterward, everything can be peeled apart and

reassembled, like a dream within a dream.”

Ultimately, by orchestrating an eclectic and seemingly chaotic array of

elements, Denize aims to create what she calls a “vibrant whole”—a

sensorial, sonic aesthetic space that invites awareness of the internal flux

of transformation to which all things are subjected.

As Jung suggested, when trapped psychic energy is released, it seeks new

expression through symbolic forms. Once these internal images recirculate

in new shapes, the resulting aesthetic compositions pulse with a kind of

psychedelic dynamism. The solidity of a color plane blends with more fluid

passages, generating a sense of vibrant, transformative and continuously shifting energy. The exhibition space itself becomes a site of both physical

and psychological flux, where things are in constant motion, morphing

and interacting in unexpected, exhilarating ways—forming a “vibrant

whole” where intellect and instinct, conscious and subconscious, blend.

“Having studied theater and worked for a long time in cinema, I have a

strong appreciation for arranging elements in relation to each other and an

obsession with balance. The arrangement happens gradually as the shapes

appear.” Ultimately, by orchestrating an eclectic and seemingly chaotic array of

elements, Denize aims to create what she calls a “vibrant whole”—a

sensorial, sonic aesthetic space that invites awareness of the internal flux

of transformation to which all things are subjected.

Mathilde Denize took possession of painting when she decided that certain

of her canvases would enjoy a more interesting perspective if she separated

them from their stretchers. As soon as they were freed from the wooden

frame that acted as both support and tension, her paintings fluttered like

laundry from a window, overhanging the void. By her own admission, these

forms and figures that were unfinished—or precisely too finished because

they were too captive— turned into yards of painting divested of the chassis

to which they had been confined.

At the same time, she enjoyed collecting, gathering scrap and objects from

the street that others had scorned and abandoned. Battered, smashed,

shattered, and incomplete, their exile rendered them sensitive and touching.

Banished from everyday domestic existence, in her studio they regained a

semblance of life. A salvaged hat block, curled-up leaves, neglected bits of

paper: protective of their tattered memories, Mathilde Denize assembled

them with a tie, an elastic band, or a makeshift piece of string, bandaging

them with kindness.

The artist alternated between this recreational collecting and cutting up

her paintings—not to destroy them, but to observe the residual shapes

that could emerge. Soon, these pieces and fragments became an obvious

match for the trifling objects. The aggregation of painted forms pieced

together and scantily assembled into clothing sensations, like garments

forgotten on a coat rack, underscored the sense of absence that united the

abandoned objects. In this approximation, Mathilde Denize found herself wholly. The hanging of her work would no longer only entail the customary,

expected, white partitions. The body would be the plinth. Her practice would

be multiple.

Painting, sculpture, performance, and installation would not suffice to define

the personal artistic geography she had adopted, where the course

is charted by the makeshift means employed.

Dressmaker’s toile or painter’s canvas? The question seems posed by

two works from 2020, Relief for Her and Body Keep. Both paintings are

oil on cotton canvas. The typology of a barely modeled jacket is clearly

recognizable in both, yet this does not make it an instrument in a wardrobe.

Mathilde Denize’s painted works stand a thread’s breath away from the limp

inhabitants of dressing rooms and closets, without ever quite adopting their

territory. Roughly cut, sketchily sewn, the sleeves of a harlequin jacket (Coat

Trail for a Shell, 2021), the legs of barely outlined pants (Contours, 2018),

the relief created in a suspended swimsuit (Contours, 2021), form a unique

visual vestiaire more than they mimic any wardrobe. While some creations

borrow their titles from the language of clothes (Oversize, 2019), the lure

of fashion ends there. Mathilde Denize’s costumes are but illusion and

appearance. They are not civilian, everyday, urban, or theatrical costumes.

They are, at most, apparel for an exceptional ceremony for which only

the artist knows the date of the performance. To see for yourself, look at

the Haute Peinture performance from 2019. On bodies reduced to black

silhouettes, painted fragments of aborted clothes compose and recompose

unrestrained figures, frameless paintings in motion. The faces rendered absent by felt cloche hats dictate an anonymity that highlights a work painted

as a freestyle choreography. There is little filiation with the realm of fashion.

When it comes to fragile assembly and poor materials, Mathilde Denize’s

wearable art is more a legacy of the artistic practices of Kurt Schwitters

or Robert Filliou. Oskar Schlemmer comes to mind and his triadic ballets

where costumes, artworks in motion, reigned supreme. As does Giacomo

Balla and his attempts at colorful utopian clothing. Mathilde Denize was a

set painter for a while, mainly for films. This is not irrelevant. Her patched-

together suits—hand-woven pictorial fantasies—are also expressions of

her admiration for the Armenian director Sergei Parajanov, and his film The

Color of Pomegranates in particular. An atmosphere of solitude prevails

over these objects, of which Mathilde Denize, in her turn, is the custodian.

Suspended on the wall as if on a hook or a hanger, jumbled on a body that

they don’t quite dress, Mathilde Denize’s painted clothes scream isolation

and absence. With overloaded motifs, colored lines that turn them into

purposefully present camouflages, and the sense of expectation in which

they are precariously held, walled in silence, could these unsettling clothes—

paintings to try on for size— not be the remnants and embellishments of a

relentlessly salvaged past that is on the verge of disappearing?

The sensitive, poetic, unstable archaeology that Mathilde Denize collects,

accumulates, cuts, and assembles, like a wallpaper being constantly

recomposed, is now her creative playground. It is where she governs the

complicity of connections between these disaffected forms.

Recently, Mathilde Denize has regvained a foothold in painting, after what

will be called a necessary and fruitful digression through the theatre of

objects, silent and yet so eloquent, exploring a large scope of materials and

their assembly. Now, the time to paint has come again. In order to take the

plunge and fully commit to it, the artist chose to seize painting by reusing

the remains of past works: in other words, by transforming the rejected,

unsatisfactory canvases from her time at Beaux-Arts into fantastical

costumes.

Initially swimsuits, these painting suits are now liveries. In fact, they

represent armor as much as they do prosthesis, generating undefined roles

that reference the casts seen hanging in Marcel Duchamp’s Cimetière des

uniformes et livrées. Similarly, they preserve the abstraction of the pattern

and the emptiness of the receptacle, while calling on bodies to put them on

and animate them, to endorse them. They have the rigidity and sometimes

the bulk of the costumes designed by Oskar Schlemmer for his Triadic

Ballet, though the curves and movement of color evoke the fluidity of Loïe

Fuller’s veils, static, as if frozen in a photograph. Amplifying the limbs, they

also conceal the body behind reflections, currents or other effects which

resemble camouflage. Heads and faces disappear, while the performers

intertwine and merge into a living painting, constantly evolving.

Mathilde Denize titled this pictorial choreography for constrained bodies

Haute peinture in a spirit of playfulness. The allusion to couture contained

in this expression evokes the method she used to achieve her goals, a certain form of seduction, and, also, the material she chose to show, painting

on canvas.

One may also notice the heightened intensity created when pouring bodies

into the work, forming containers for human existence. Such an action is

reminiscent of those undertaken by several pioneering performance artists,

particularly women. Women who painted themselves —literally covered

in paint– to establish and clear a territory for their own artistic creations,

emancipated from all assumptions, whatever they might be. Denize’s work is

evocative of Carolee Schneemann of Eye Body, who was born symbolically

as an artist through rituals involving her body as much as the painting.

If it was necessary for this generation of artists to withdraw from painting

in order to become artists, Haute peinture is certainly about getting out of

painting (at least from the limits usually assigned to it). It is about returning

renewed. In order to create according to her own rules, she creates herself:

gestures, a body, positions, an attitude, a posture, in painting. What better

way to make a painting last than to wear it and to move around in it, to cast

bodies in it — painted without being, and yet obviously alive: to think of

being a painter by bringing the painting to life.

Mathilde Denize’s paintings, sculptures and installations are made from

collections of ordinary materials that are in perpetual motion and mutation.

It all began with the desire to paint and portray human beings. This is

what Mathilde Denize attempted to do while training under Djamel Tatah

at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Little by little

she expanded her practice to include collecting objects, fragments really,

building up a repertoire of materials, textures, shapes and colors. The

objects are damaged, decontextualized and incomplete; they bear silent,

impalpable narratives that Denize strives to make visible.

In her studio they are arranged on shelves, hidden in boxes, displayed on the

floor and pedestals, and hung on the walls. A carved rock, a piece of cloth,

a dried lemon, plant leaves, black and white photos, textile fabric cut-offs

and wallpaper samples. Bringing them together in the same space gives

rise to a multitude of formal experiments as she assembles, juxtaposes

and fits together each of the elements using, say, a nail, rubber band or

knotted wool string. Through simple gestures, she respects the integrity

of the original object, whether sliding a photo between two stones, placing

a piece of orange peel on a piece of wood or inserting a plaster form into

a box. Her assemblages ultimately take the form of totems or mysterious

pagan altars.



EVERYDAY OBJECT

These objects constitute the building blocks of a language that Denize

constructs and deconstructs over time. An intuitive, physical, formal and

memory-based language inherited from historic movements such as Land

Art and Arte Povera, as well as individual artists like Robert Filliou, Hans Arp,

Kurt Schwitters, and Joseph Beuys.

By using everyday trivial objects, she produces works that reflect on the

nature of time, the body, memory, presence, and absence. Problematics

having to do with strata, variation, metamorphosis, and movement. Denize’s

visual language escapes any permanence, rules or system.

While in the beginning, when first working in three dimensions, her pieces

were entirely conceived based on objects collected and presented as ready-

mades, she gradually began to incorporate elements she fabricated herself,

such as concrete castings of mouths and sculptures made of enameled

ceramic or painted wood. Her observation of the fragments engendered

their transposition into new materials or media.

In this sense, painting has once again taken a central place in her process of

production. Exit the human figure, exit the combat. Denize’s works painted

on canvas are distinguished through the unique use of color and light, as

well as the presence of motif-object and indeterminate shapes.

She recycles her older paintings so that they become raw material. From

painted canvases she cuts out human silhouettes of which nothing is left

but clothing: a shirt, pants, bathing suits. These simultaneously pictorial and

sculptural extractions produce high relief works within which objects and

painting are hybridized and reconciled. 



THOUGHT IN MOTION

Denize’s work attests to the impossibility of portraying the world in a way

that is solid, totalizing and fixed. Her sculptures and paintings are subject to multiple transformations, shifts and recycling. Hidden within a piece can

be a future piece. From one show to the next she «performs» her pieces by

modifying their initial «state», a state that is temporary and transitional, thus

challenging what gives an artwork it’s authority.

She also challenges the generalized aspiration for display and spectacle

that has driven the art world since the end of the twentieth century. Instead

of big effects, she prefers modest means, fragments of anonymous stories,

non-events, snatches of memories that we have to reconstitute or even

fabricate.

While Denize’s work reveals little about her personally, it occupies other

territories: that of the ephemeral, the uncertain, incompleteness and

discretion. It represents a personal mode of expression, a new language

to reflect on the world. The performative dimension of her work introduces

movement that is marked both by an anxiety and an immense freedom to

redefine the possible.