Caroline Denervaud Brings Dance to Canvas in Seoul’s “Still Moving”
Swiss artist Caroline Denervaud, who lives in Paris, paints with her whole body and talks about collaborating with Louis Vuitton and her approach to movement with Cultbytes as her new solo opens in Seoul.
When recording herself painting, Caroline Denervand chooses to wear neutral colours, something that is usually elastic and good to move in; “what I wear can change everything, I would be more constricted in a tight dress, making my trace different,” the artist tells me over video call. Her first career was as a dancer, her second as a fine artist. However, defining movement as the most natural way of expressing herself she sees her painting practice to be based within what she calls traces, movement and performance. Interestingly, she has brought the audience to her fine art process; “It just happened one day. I started recording myself while tracing on the floor with my body….in a way, there is always an audience,” says Denervand.
Each piece starts with movement, utilising her body with black and white to paint on linen, she then puts it up on the wall and adds colour. Nothing is intentional, but her clothing, which she sees as a costume. It is a performance after all. “The only thing I plan is what I wear. The rest comes without choreography or music,” says Denervand. She finds it easier to begin her work with motion; “I make abstract art; I have nothing to explain or to teach people. I bring energy and feelings, my final artwork is a mirror to myself,” she continues. Denervand seeks an emotional connection to her work and hopes for the viewer to find their meaning and reflections. “I want to see how people react to my art. It is a place where the viewer can project themselves just like I do,” she explains.
Throughout her two careers, she has been working with different designers and artists. “Fashion is much more than marketing; it can disguise you to be another person, it can give you power, it brings out a character,” she continues. In October 2022 she collaborated on a fabric print with French designer Chloé. The same year she did her second collaboration with actor and director Adrien Dantou, performing live to create a video for Louis Vuitton’s 200th anniversary.
“Adrien was the first one that I invited into my process; it was not planned. We recorded and at the end, we were happy and surprised by the result,” says Denervand. From there the two started performing together in New York and Paris. And, Denervand discovered a passion for using other dancers in her work. Always looking ahead, she enthusiastically starts to talk about her dream project of working on a larger scale; “I would love to work with a group of women dancers, a concept of basic movements, going back to our roots, the core of everything.” She hopes to get this project out as a performance in the theatres. The aim is to leave all our concepts of what ‘dancing’ should look like, no perfect choreography, just expression, a way to play around with the idea of exploring what happens when bodies meet and create.
On August 30th, her most recent solo show Still Moving opened at Whitestone Gallery in Seoul. We connected over video call shortly before, her from her Parisian house, and me from Spain. It was early morning, the light was soft, and I could see from the screen the elegant white ceiling ornamented with Art Nouveau decorations from the early 1900s. I could hear some tinkling noises in the background, as I caught her playing with her rings in her bright red jumper. Denervand trained as a professional dancer, and after an unfortunate accident, she moved to Paris to study art and fashion; “I was a fire person, I had to go ahead and do things,” says the artist about her altered course in life.
A sensitive geometry lays on the canvas, lines in motion of human contours balanced with a vibrant mix of colours; “it is an immersion into the process. I must let go of my ego,” Denervand says, clarifying that her work is a spontaneous act of freedom and expression. She lets herself go into the present moment, a meditation, submerging into her body, letting all her emotions on paper. She continues, “I move and then I understand what I did. There is no goal just the act of creating.” Planning never works for the artist, whether it be a color or a shape, she ends up not liking the final result; “if I plan it, I end up being disappointed as it never works how I want it to,” she says. Even sound triggers her process; explaining, “I prefer working in silence. I find music too powerful, it would change my entire work.
Still Moving, the Seoul exhibition, is comprised of nine paintings inspired by ten phrases from T.S. Eliot’s poem Burnt Norton—“neither flesh nor fleshness”, “a white light still and moving”, and “there is only the dance,” are among them. These phrases serve as emotional starting points. Her art is not a demonstration of perfection of hard labor but rather an embrace of imperfections; “it is about the truthiness of the movement, a simple act of a raw moment,” she explains. The colors that she finds using often are pink and red, they are a safe choice for her, while yellow and black she avoids as they can be hard to use as she finds them particularly powerful. The paint fills the spaces she created with her body, and it all happens very quickly. Sometimes it works like magic and other times it can be a disappointment. The artist tries not to take herself too seriously. When she is in her studio, she has a playful approach to her work rather than working formulaically.
Following her intuition, she knows a good painting when she is surprised by it.
Coming to the end of our interview, I got some insights into Denervand’s famous collectors. A year ago, during her exhibition in LA, she met an American actress and a chef; “they are famous collectors, but I will mostly say that they are people with whom I have a friendship.” The artist clarifies that is rare to find a connection with the people who purchase her art, although she loves to be consistently present at her opening exhibitions, involved in meeting everyone, talking with them, and answering any questions. She continues, concluding: “It is a precious moment, you work alone all the time in the studio and then the art is outside, shared.”
Caroline Denvervand: Still Moving is on view at Whitestone Gallery, 70 Sowol-ro, Yongsan-ku, Seoul, Korea.
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