In Clément Denis’s paintings, movement becomes line and color gives voice to emotion. His figures emerge between imagination and memory. What questions lie behind them? We spoke with the artist about his techniques and themes.

Paper as a Living Medium

Whitestone Gallery Taipei

- In a previous interview, you mentioned your preference for certain tools and materials. Do you still draw by hand? Have you experimented with any new techniques?

Denis: In 2011, I started experimenting with my body as a tool. In 2012, I put my hand in the paint and felt a real symbiosis: I realized that paint wasn't just paint, but that I could develop a real language through it. Since then, the use of my fingers and hands has been very present, but in a quest to explore techniques and variations I have started to incorporate other tools to offer different rhythms to the way we apply paint and make my work richer and more interesting. There's an interplay between the tools I use and the theme I'm tackling. 

Whitestone Gallery Taipei

- I heard that you place a strong emphasis on paper as a medium. What draws you to paper? Why do you choose paper over canvas?

Denis: For me, the work must be alive, vibrant and constantly evolving. That's why I use paper rather than canvas. Paper is organic, and with acrylics and drawing tools, I can work faster and always be in the same energy.

Technically, paper offers me a richer medium: I can use the juices to get into the depths of the paper, to get inside it and play with the thicker layers that are superimposed on it. Because of the different working depths offered by paper, there's something that requires a certain accuracy, because each brushstroke leaves an imprint that will have an impact on what's laid on top. So, you have to deal with mistakes if they happen, but above all you have to avoid them! Again, I see a link with who we are as human beings. 

Movement becomes line, emotion becomes color

Clément Denis ”The Wait - Watching the Traces II” 2024, 90.0 × 70.0 cm, Mixed media on paper

- What is the relationship between bodily movement and The Wait series?

Denis: There are some influences and games in this series: on the question of movement, Rodin's drawings inspired me. In Rodin's movement drawings, these are movements of models in a state of pose, and therefore of expectation. I remembered drawings from the last thirty years of his life. Rodin uses fluid, expressive lines in his drawings, capturing intense emotions, even if the sketches sometimes seem unfinished.His mastery of composition and the organization of forms on paper inspired me as I worked to incorporate elements of movement and dynamism into these works, which certainly represent figures in waiting, but whose psychological state is ‘active’, in search of a path.

Whitestone Gallery Taipei

- What inspired the different color palettes across each series?

Denis: For the colors, it comes with the theme I am trying to address. For The Struggle, and particularly the weaving papers which have mainly a quasi-blue font, I created a pattern for the background that resembles to thick waters, as I wanted to symbolize the idea of us being in the waters of life, sometimes feeling like we are drowning, sometimes reaching the surface, sometimes embracing the flow and easily navigating through the challenges we face. 

My color palette has evolved, and I’m currently drawn to vibrant, acidulous colors to sublimate the topic I cover. I guess in a way I am defeating the general tendency in European paintings of using soft colors, brown and yellows. For example, for The Escape, although I am inspired by washed ;out by the time Italian religious frescoes, I chose to go for bright colors, almost pop sometimes. 

In terms of lines, for The Wait I was looking for an involvement and a quest for power in the treatment: almost erased silhouettes superimposed on each other to form an intricate shape with thin lines made of bright colors.

A journey that begins with the question of portraying someone

Whitestone Gallery Taipei

- Do the figures in your works have specific models, or are they imagined? 

Denis: It depends on the series. I start by imagining what I want to paint, then refer to images from my archives - family photographs, photographs I've made or collected, advertising images and postcards, royalty-free war archives, etc. Then I make mental collages or sketches. I'm a pure product of the Internet generation in a way and before I physically discovered the world, I first encountered it digitally.

My landscapes, on the other hand, have something more hybrid, between the West and the East, and sometimes, when I approach the question of pattern, I realize that unconsciously it's Africa and the Middle-East that inspire me.

Whitestone Gallery Taipei

- Each of the three series in this exhibition draws inspiration from very different sources. When do you feel the most inspired? How do ideas come to you in your daily life?

Denis: My mind is a big library in which I store all the things I discover out of curiosity, so it's hard to say when it comes, why and how. 

My series are the result of an often-visceral reaction to social issues and questions that are on my mind. My art is undoubtedly political. Politics is linked to the life of the Cité (I.e society), and it is the life of the Cité that drives me. But I don’t care for politicians, I'm interested in people. Everywhere in the world, walls are being built rather than libraries, and my work takes this second path. 

Whitestone Gallery Taipei

- <The Escape> series references the history of refugees. Even today, wars continue to displace many people around the world. Through this series, what message do you hope to convey?

Denis: With <The Escape>, my goal was to bring people back to our common roots: homo-sapiens. That is why I immersed myself in the first cave paintings like those of Lascaux and the remains of Paleo-Christian frescoes recounting the Jews' flight from Egypt. 

But for Taiwan I added subtle references to the Austronesian journey. 

What I wanted to provoke in people was a conversation - a deeper conversation about our common origins, linked to the current concerns of our different countries as it struggles for territory. Rather than focusing on Taiwan over the last three hundred years, I wanted to go back to basics, to the long history that takes us back to an ancient period, more than 3000 years before Christ. 

Taiwan was an aboriginal land before it belonged to any particular colonizer. That's why I took the time to study the history of the native Taiwanese, with a focus on the Paiwan, Bunun, Atayal and Amis peoples. Their cultures, their crafts, the colors of their clothing... In fact, these colors can be found in The Escape.

Whitestone Gallery Taipei

-  The title of this exhibition is Beyond the Lines, Where Borders Collapse II. Do you plan to continue this series?

Denis: I had split the exhibition into three steps - The Wait, The Escape, The Struggle - but for me there is a fourth step missing: The Creation. This third part of Beyond Lines will be essentially about creation, which seems to me to be the last major avenue in the question posed by the series. To know where you're going, you have to position yourself at four cardinal points, and that's why I think it's necessary to develop this fourth step or way. 

For that, I am starting work with female dancers from NTUA and I'm very inspired by the use of the body by the male dancers from the Bulareyaung Dance Company, because dance is a way of creating with the body, and in my obsession with the human figure and the human body, dance seems to me to be an appropriate medium of expression. 

Whitestone Gallery Taipei

To paint is to face society—its history, its memory, and its individual voices. Clément Denis continues to explore these questions with quiet intensity and a steady hand.

Clément Denis’s solo exhibition at Whitestone Gallery Taipei runs through April 26, 2025. Selected works are also viewable online.

CLÉMENT DENIS: Beyond the Lines, Where Borders Collapse II