Hápax
February 11–April 30, 2023
2 Place des Quatre Z’horloges
44600 Saint-Nazaire
France
Hours: Tuesday–Sunday 2–7pm
T +33 2 44 73 44 00
grand_cafe@saintnazaire.fr
For 30 years, Mattia Denisse has been producing a broad and varied body of graphic work, organised in thematic groups: Archetale, Encyclopaedia Psychopomp, Eve smokes, Meteors, Tautological Drawings, Humus, Antonomasias. Strange and clever titles that spark the viewer’s curiosity like clues, or like the relics of a bizarre world—a world where, as in dreams, absurdity reigns and the enigmatic is the rule. Everything seems possible, especially the impossible, because everything is imaginable. Woven from references to literature and anthropology, to the myths and legends of different periods and cultures, this expressive and elliptical work designs something otherworldly: wild like the unconscious, Mattia Denisse’s universe forms an existential cosmogony populated with ambiguous figures that defy our desire to give meaning to all things.
Mattia Denisse was born in 1967 in Blois (France). Since 1999 he has lived in Lisbon, Portugal, maintaining friendly relations with many Portuguese artists, including João Maria Gusmão and Pedro Paiva, for whom he produced the anthology of texts for the publication accompanying the Portuguese pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2009.
His work has recently been the subject of solo exhibitions at Culturgest, Lisbon; West Den Haag, The Hague, Netherlands; GAK, Bremen, Germany; Biennial of Coimbra, Portugal; Gabinete editions, Lisbon; Casa das Histórias – Museu Paula Rego, Cascais, Portugal; Fortaleza, Brazil.
Curator: Anne Bonnin
This exhibition is produced in partnership with Culturgest, Lisbon, where a version of it was curated by Bruno Marchand in 2022.
Press contact: Anne Samson Communication / Federica Forte, federica [at] annesamson.com
