MATHILDE ROSIER b. 1973

 « The way Mathilde Rosier works finds its starting point in the decision which led her to retire to an isolated building at the heart of a rural and agricultural environment, which has been the central subject of her work for the last 20 years. In the first phase of this research, the artist turned to the history of psychology and to the hypothesis that the only authentic link to nature lies in the unconscious, a relic of our primitive state which contrasts with the civilised and conscious self. For a few years now, these representations of domesticated nature have continued in a new series, where hybrid bodies with vegetal limbs. These images evoke simultaneously the mental experience of dissolution in living things which the artist submits to, the intensity of her link with her environment, and that which is induced by industrial agricultural methods; the immediate kinship between plant and human, and the intensive exploitation of one by the other. If her earlier works were ways of communing with the world, these works are about becoming one with it.
 
Whether treated through paintings, drawings, assemblages, films, costumes, or performances, this theme continues to express itself, in a way which could recall symbolist art, the decorative art of the theatre or ballet, or even the ornaments common in certain Indigenous works. But it is also counterintuitive to think that these images refer to anything but themselves. Rather, they are proof of an “art of attention”, to use Estelle Zhong Mengual’s phrase about naturalist women of the 21st century, who consider nature as a subject and who celebrate a return to it. »

— Excerpt of Thierry Leviez’s for Aware Price 2022

Mathilde Rosier was born in Paris in 1973. She lives and works in Burgundy and in Basel, Switzerland. She is a professor at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland in Basel and, since 2016, has been teaching at the Institute Art Gender Nature at the Basel Academy of Art and Design. After completing a master’s degree in economics at Paris Dauphine University, she studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris under Christian Boltanski and Jean-Marc Bustamante. She later held residencies at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam in 2002, and at the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) in New York in 2006. Mathilde Rosier was also a finalist for the AWARE Prize in 2022.

Her one person projects include Camden Art Centre, London; Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach; Serpentine Galleries, London; Jeu de Paume, Paris; Museo Madre, Naples; MASP, São Paulo; Fondation Pernod Ricard, Paris; as well as an in situ commission for the CCR of the Mucem in Marseille.

Mathilde Rosier recently took part in group exhibitions at Musée d’art moderne et contemporaine de Saint-Etienne, FR; Musée d’Art moderne et contemporain de Strasbourg, FR (permanent collection); Musée d’art contemporain de Lyon, FR; CRAC Alsace, FR; FRAC Grand Large, Dunkirk, FR; Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève, CH; Tabakalera, San Sebastián, ES, Museo Madre, Naples, IT; Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau, CH;  and Castello di Rivoli, Turin, IT.

Her work is included in public and private collections such as FRAC Méca Bordeaux; Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain Strasbourg; CIRVA Marseille; Castello di Rivoli, Turin, IT; Museo MADRE – Donnaregina Contemporary Art Museum, Naples, IT; Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach, DE; Center for Curatorial Studies, Hessel Collection, Bard College, New York, US; CNAP, Paris, FR; Kadist Art Foundation, Paris FR; Julia Stoschek Collection, Düsseldorf DE; UBS Art Collection, Zurich CH; Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Cuneo IT; Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation, London UK; MUCEM, Marseille FR; Kunsthalle Hamburg DE; Fonds d’Art Contemporain – Paris, FR; Kunstpalais Erlangen DE; Deutsche Bank Frankfurt DE; Deutsche Bank London, UK, and Musée d’art contemporain, Lyon, FR (Donation Lemaître).