In a whirlwind of material sensations, the artistic universe of Mathilde Denize (Sarcelles, France, 1986) takes shape in the substance of an undeniably poetic dream. Scraps, cuts and remnants of a saturated context form the poetic unity of an approach to design with a clear avant-garde legacy. In the experimentation with form, traces and color, Denize’s works seem to metaphorically remind us that if time cannot be said to follow a purely linear course, the matter of memory too lends itself to accumulation in stages and within a complex stratification.
Between painting, performance and the need to picture the presence of a body as the matrix of a whole, the French artist has led a series of luminous solo shows across Perrotin Gallery’s spaces. If the solo show Sound of figures (2025) at the New York location had already placed the viewer before the basic possibility of reading forms and artistic evocations through a necessary change of course and multiple points of view, the exhibition recently staged by Perrotin Tokyo carried the audience along the complex and vast trajectory of rich, layered experimental games, much like a collection of thoughts giving back an open diary.
Time e Light has restored a dream to the territory of the possible, confirming the artist’s cherished practice of decomposition and stitching in tribute to the discarded and to an ever-new guise. From the echoes of Carolee Schneemann’s pioneering work, to the simultanéisme of Sonia Delaunay, Mathilde Denize’s artistic operation lays claim to a poetic reminder of what can still be achieved, offering dedication, trial in the pairing of fabrics and the liveliest reflections on form, space and color.
Within the famously aseptic walls of the white cube, her deconstructed universe caresses the shapes of a body desired and made real, one that asserts itself in dialogue with an ever-so-powerful artistic expressiveness. The trajectory thus evoked – pulsing in its encounter with other eyes, sharing in an ever-new and open unfolding of meaning in relation to the artwork – crosses multiple paths and further possibilities. Encounters and clusters of graceful forms and colors evoking the essence of matter (from veil to brocade, to velvet) converge in giving back an exhibition universe that embraces the atmosphere and rhythm of a sought-after, deeply felt, essential realization.
Article by Floriana Savino
