Mathilde Denize’s Rhythmic Compositions Form a Musical Score
French artist Mathilde Denize brings a tactile, physical energy to her first Japanese solo exhibition at Perrotin Tokyo. Known for a process that involves cutting up her old canvases and sewing them back together, Denize treats painting as a form of construction. In her new series, Contours, she moves away from using outside objects like leather or shells to focus on the paint itself, building her surfaces using pigments salvaged from film sets and advertising shoots, layering hazy pinks, golden yellows and rich purples to create a sense of history.
The structural thinking behind these works echoes the ideas of Symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé, who treated words like physical objects — placing them on a page to fragment the reader’s pace. Denize applies this to the gallery itself, hanging her canvases in a single horizontal line to create a rhythm that feels like a musical score. This approach also connects to the modernism of painter Sonia Delaunay, who used color relationships to create a visual beat. Rather than simply reenacting these historical styles, Denize engages with the questions they left unfinished.
