SHAPES IN SILENCE
Exhibition at the Galerie Dutko, Paris
From May 15 to June 22 2019

“Shapes in Silence” is Gallery Dutko’s invitation toward an immersion in an atmosphere of quietness and meditation. The two artists on display, German Matthias Contzen and British Tom Henderson, work in highly contrasting media and materials: Matthias Contzen occupies the physical space with large tridimensional objects, and his material of choice is the classic and candid white marble. Contzen grants marble a completely new aesthetic, one which recalls lace. Henderson, on the other hand, paints the acrylic glass with solid colours sections of which are later removed due to process and chance. At first regard, the resulting geometric patterns appear still. Yet, on closer inspection, these patterns invite the viewer for a deeper inspection, to look from different angles and to contemplate different material transparencies.

Their work transports the viewer to a notion of the pure and the abstract, which are better performed through classical forms via a preconceived intellectual approach that includes mathematical systems, geometric forms and manipulation of chosen materials. The honesty of their works is delivered by their formal attributes, which directly derive from their investigatory intentions. As in Minimalism, they celebrate rationalism and a mathematical way of thinking, while sustaining “an aesthetic position in which the construction of an object would point toward an immediate, legible geometry.”