Daniel Dezeuze

Mesoamerica, Cités perdues et Derniers refuges

Galerie Templon is dedicating a spring show in Paris to another founding member of the Supports/Surface group. Daniel Dezeuze, now 82, is showing his latest work, all new, encompassing sculptures, paintings, drawings and an installation, in the gallery’s space at 28 Rue Grenier-Saint-Lazare from 2 March to 27 April 2024.

Daniel Dezeuze – Mesoamerica (Lost City and Last refuge), TEMPLON Paris, 2024
Daniel Dezeuze – Mesoamerica (Lost City and Last refuge), TEMPLON Paris, 2024

Daniel Dezeuze’s “Mesoamerica” is a personal reflection inspired by his travels in Mexico and Mayan architecture. In the mid-sixties, the young Dezeuze spent his first year in Mexico, which had a profound influence on him.

His latest ‘tableaux’, wall assemblages made from scraps of painted wood, recall this seminal experience of the jungle and vanished civilisations. On the ground floor of the exhibition, around a ‘negotiating table’, there is an installation of ‘weapons’, ‘table guns’ and other ‘shields’, evoking the tensions between nature and culture, ‘indigenous’ peoples and colonisers. The simplicity of the materials chosen – wood, wire mesh, corks – and the delicacy of their combination, offer a troubling reflection on the boundaries between art and craft, the savage and the polite, but also on the fragility of civilisations and modernity.

In the basement of the gallery, as a counterpoint, Daniel Dezeuze has assembled a collection of drawings, a jungle of flowers, insects, mosquitoes and snails.

Bordering on abstraction, these drawings depict a delicate but untameable nature, reflecting the artist’s obsession with “capturing the elusive”.
For almost fifty years, Daniel Dezeuze has been pursuing his research into the deconstruction of the painting, exploring the traditional supports and materials of painting, in search of a reflection on the history and function of the practice of painting. Very early on he disregarded the canvas, turning stretchers against the wall, playing with emptiness and three-dimensionality to go beyond the limits of pictorial tradition. Curious about nomadic and non-European cultures, he imbues his work with craft practices and anthropology. His singular itinerary involves experimenting with materials considered poor – wood, gauze, nets, fabrics – and with misappropriated objects. His work has greatly influenced new generations of European painters, and is now part of public collections such as the Centre Pompidou, the Musée d’art moderne de la ville de Paris, the Musée Fabre in Montpellier, the Carré d’art in Nîmes and the MAC, Musée d’Art Contemporain de Marseille.

Bouclier 6, 2013

Details

  • Mesoamerica, Cités perdues et Derniers refuges
  • Mesoamerica, Cités perdues et Derniers refuges
  • Mesoamerica, Cités perdues et Derniers refuges
  • Mesoamerica, Cités perdues et Derniers refuges
  • Mesoamerica, Cités perdues et Derniers refuges
  • Mesoamerica, Cités perdues et Derniers refuges
  • Mesoamerica, Cités perdues et Derniers refuges

The artist

Born in 1942 in Alès, France, Daniel Dezeuze was one of the founding members of the Supports/Surfaces group in the 1970s. His work seeks to explore and question the concepts that underpin painting, galleries and space. The artist appropriates a wide variety of techniques, offering a reinterpretation of American art, both abstract and minimalist, while constantly experimenting with what are seen as basic materials: net, metal gauze, wood, fabric and metal.

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