Mathilde Denize: Camera Ballet

Curator : Céline Poulin

The Frac Île-de-France is hosting Mathilde Denize’s first solo exhibition at an institution in the Paris region, for which she is taking over Le Plateau. Denize’s artistic practice combines painting and sculpture—which she considers inseparable—with installation, video and performance. She has developed a unique body of work in which forms are born of assembly, transformation and recycling. Her paintings, which often resemble garments or costumes, are both pictorial surfaces and portable objects, existing on the border between painting, volume, and scenography.

She cuts up her old canvases and attaches fragments of found materials and discarded objects to them. Her cutting and editing techniques are reminiscent of filmmaking. This personal archaeology results in hybrid works: costumes without bodies that are somewhere between armour and camouflage; floating silhouettes; and suspended figures. Paradoxically, the absence of the suggested bodies reinforces their presence. The elusive figures blend into the surrounding colour like a halo, creating a special aura around them.

Mathilde Denize stages her paintings, transforming them into authentic “theatrical tableaux.” Through her installations, she creates spaces for perception rather than narrative, encouraging us to explore shapes and sensations.

Camera Ballet is an immersive experience in which visitors move amongst object-paintings, textile sculptures, videos and performative devices, many of which have been created specially for this exhibition. Mathilde Denize creates a theatrical display of materials and presences, a kind of silent choreography in which forms come to life.

Camera Ballet encourages us to perceive things differently, to allow our gaze to wander and to set it in motion, and to bring transient forms and figures to life.

Mathilde Denize was born in Sarcelles, France, in 1986. She graduated from the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris in 2013. She works in Saint-Ouen. Represented by the contemporary art gallery Perrotin, she has recently exhibited her work in New York and Shanghai. Her work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions in France and internationally. She was an artist-in-residence at the Villa Médicis from 2020 to 2021.