MATHILDE DENIZE

A woman’s umbrella lay flat on the sidewalk and a step or two beyonda glove had been forgotten on a bench. The Paris night grew big withshadows and these lost objects seemed to become a part of it.

– Philippe Soupaul, Last Nights of Paris, __1928, trans. William Carlos Williams (New York:Full Court Press, 1982).

Mathilde Denize took possession of painting when she decided thatcertain of her canvases would enjoy a more interesting perspective ifshe separated them from their stretchers. As soon as they were freedfrom the wooden frame that acted as both support and tension, herpaintings fluttered like laundry from a window, overhanging the void. Byher own admission, these forms and figures that were unfinished—orprecisely too finished because they were too captive—turned into yardsof painting divested of the chassis to which they had been confined.

At the same time, she enjoyed collecting, gathering scrap andobjects from the street that others had scorned and abandoned.Battered, smashed, shattered, and incomplete, their exile renderedthem sensitive and touching. Banished from everyday domestic existence, in her studio they regained a semblance of life. A salvaged hatblock, curled-up leaves, neglected bits of paper: protective of theirtattered memories, Mathilde Denize assembled them with a tie, anelastic band, or a makeshift piece of string, bandaging them withkindness.

The artist alternated between this recreational collecting and cuttingup her paintings—not to destroy them, but to observe the residualshapes that could emerge. Soon, these pieces and fragmentsbecame an obvious match for the trifling objects. The aggregation ofpainted forms pieced together and scantily assembled into clothingsensations, like garments forgotten on a coat rack, underscored thesense of absence that united the abandoned objects. In this approximation, Mathilde Denize found herself wholly. The hanging of herwork 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 notsuffice 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 bytwo works from 2020, Relief for Her and Body Keep. Both paintingsare oil on cotton canvas. The typology of a barely modelled jacket isclearly recognisable in both, yet this does not make it an instrument ina wardrobe.

Mathilde Denize’s painted works stand a thread’s breath away fromthe limp inhabitants of dressing rooms and closets, without ever quiteadopting their territory. Roughly cut, sketchily sewn, the sleeves of aharlequin jacket (Coat Trail for a Shell, 2021, pp. 22–23), the legs ofbarely outlined pants (Contours, 2018), the relief created in a suspended swimsuit (Contours, 2021, p. 63), form a unique visual vestiaire more than they mimic any wardrobe. While some creationsborrow their titles from the language of clothes (Oversize, 2019), thelure of fashion ends there. Mathilde Denize’s costumes are but illusionand appearance. They are not civilian, everyday, urban, or theatricalcostumes. They are, at most, apparel for an exceptional ceremony forwhich only the artist knows the date of the performance. To see foryourself, look at the Haute Peinture performance from 2019. Onbodies reduced to black silhouettes, painted fragments of abortedclothes compose and recompose unrestrained figures, framelesspaintings 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 comesto fragile assembly and poor materials, Mathilde Denize’s wearable artis more a legacy of the artistic practices of Kurt Schwitters or RobertFilliou. Oskar Schlemmer comes to mind and his triadic ballets wherecostumes, artworks in motion, reigned supreme. As doesGiacomo Balla and his attempts at colourful utopian clothing.

Mathilde Denize was a set painter for a while, mainly for films. This isnot 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 inparticular. An atmosphere of solitude prevails over these objects, ofwhich Mathilde Denize, in her turn, is the custodian. Suspended on thewall as if on a hook or a hanger, jumbled on a body that they don’tquite dress, Mathilde Denize’s painted clothes scream isolation andabsence. With overloaded motifs, colored lines that turn them intopurposefully present camouflages, and the sense of expectation inwhich they are precariously held, walled in silence, could these unsettling clothes—paintings to try on for size—not be the remnants andembellishments of a relentlessly salvaged past that is on the verge ofdisappearing?

The sensitive, poetic, unstable archaeology that Mathilde Denize collects, accumulates, cuts, and assembles, like a wallpaper beingconstantly recomposed, is now her creative playground. It is whereshe governs the complicity of connections between these disaffectedforms.

Press release courtesy Perrotin. Text: Olivier Saillard.