Guillaume Dénervaud: Demeter

“It might be more accurate to classify Dénervaud’s works as batteries, being objects which draw from the transfer of energy. It is the same energy required to mine Malachite, process and distribute it, before it is made into pigment in Dénervaud’s studio. Malachite is itself a copper-based semiconductor, producing a bucolic glow. Guillaume is a connoisseur of pigment, and each material accompanies its own biography: Cinnabar, containing sulphur and mercury, is deadly; Cobalt is an essential mineral in high-performance lithium-ion batteries; Ivory Black gets its resolute tone from charred bone; use of Lapis Lazuli dates back to the 4th Dynasty of Egypt; and Jet Whitby derives from fossilized trees floating in the ocean.

Guillaume has lived in Paris since 2017, and speaks of the dynamic between industrialization at the turn of the century and the iridescent paints employed by the impressionists. Duchamp claimed that painting perished at this very moment, when painters began to purchase tubed pigments instead of mixing them. Here again a formal cue mirrors a symbolic one, as the chemical composition of paint refracts both the social and natural worlds in which it circulates; the ecstatic palette of the impressionists replicated the ambition of its moment, and while Dénervaud’s palette is not without hope, its acidic tint is inflected with the skepticism of the present-day.

The all-at-once quality intrinsic to Guillaume’s work mirrors the process of globalization, which overloads the senses and turns matter abstract. It’s why these images can operate as equals on micro- and macro-scales: they can depict an entire world as effectively as a molecule using a single motif. In Dénervaud’s images, all stratifications of experience lull and assault you at once. The outcome is unfixed: either saccharine or toxic, sinister or righteous, menacing or enchanting.”

Guillaume Dénervaud (b. 1987, Fribourg, Switzerland) lives and works in Paris. He will be the subject of a solo exhibition at Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg opening in late 2026, and his solo exhibition at the Swiss Institute (SI) in New York took place in 2023–2024. Recent solo exhibitions include Galerie Gregor Staiger, Milan and Zurich (2025, 2024); Antenna Space, Shanghai (2024); Villa Atrata, Paris (2024); Bel Ami, Los Angeles (2023); and Centre d’édition Contemporaine (CEC), Geneva (2021). Institutional group exhibitions include MAMCO, Geneva (2024); Fondation d’Entreprise Pernod Ricard, Paris (2024); Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), Miami (2024); Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg, Fribourg (2022); Musée d’art Moderne de Paris, Paris (2022); La Maison Populaire, Montreuil (2022); and Magasins Généraux, Paris (2021). Dénervaud’s work is included in collections at Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), Miami; FCAC, Geneva; FMAC, Geneva; MAMCO, Geneva; Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, Paris; and X Museum, Beijing.