Matisse Mesnil

Born in 1989, Matisse Mesnil is an artist who now lives and works in Paris. He often travels to Italy, his native country. He began his career as a set designer in the film industry, a background that still permeates much of his work today. His Italian origins are evident in his work, which shows popular iconography and unfolds a world inspired by his wanderings through the streets. Buildings, their ornaments, washing hung from balconies… are all motifs that attract the artist’s attention. His treatment of these subjects brings into dialogue not only the notions of nature and culture, but also those of setting and landscape.

Matisse Mesnil’s work takes the form of research and experimentation, not just a set of questions left unanswered. The artist challenges Alberti’s paradigm of painting as “a window on the world”. He has chosen to go beyond the work of art to focus his attention on the frame. This idea stems from his work as a photographer, which led him to observe the world through a more restricted frame: that of the lens. In this way, he makes visible this element usually used as a finishing touch, to give it a more central place. The frame is also a form of opening in our everyday experience: doors, windows, areas of passage that invite us to consider our relationship with the work of art in a different way.

He used industrial processes such as welding and grinding to revisit the great clichés of art history, such as landscapes and still lifes. By using this technique, the artist rediscovers sensations that he had also experienced through sewing. Matisse Mesnil was particularly fond of assembling materials to recreate a coherent whole. He sometimes worked with draperies set in canvas. He creates patchworks of fabrics that represent agricultural plots seen from a plane. Thus, his taste for textiles is reflected in his treatment of subjects such as clotheslines.

His latest pieces are designed to create interaction between the object, the viewer and the environment. From their format to the way they are displayed, the artist has created a veritable staging. It is undoubtedly the great contradiction between a powerful, even brutal, material and technique, and the treatment of softer subjects such as flowers and landscapes, that confuses the viewer and prompts him or her to ask questions.