Denise Lioté "Landscapist of unknown spaces" (extract)
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« Before all else, paintings are meant to be seen. You can no more describe the perfume of a rose, the taste of braised beef, the sonority of an orchestra… Words don’t convey sensations. There are no words to convey the essence of painting. »
« After a long reflective quest, Denise Lioté’s oils on canvas bear witness to her sense of dazzlement. But the most distant illuminations have secret proximities : recollections as of far-away blushes surge suddenly forward turning to blue-gray. Like the expansions which communicate from afar, the signs, values and colours give voice to each other. All her meditation on the mystery of space is contained in a simple canvas rectangle. To work this miracle, you must first master light and, for creativity to come into play, discover new geometries which set the secret places where one must murmur the sign that opens the gates to infinity. Then your gaze flies towards the deep…»
Georges Coppel, l’Oeil du Griffon (The Eye of the Griffin) 1991.
« In 1991, l’œil du Griffon published a book about Denise Lioté.
About twelve years later we asked her why and how she had changed. […]
Between two paintings, Denise Lioté must have taken a step further in her exploration of the hidden dimensions of space and light, but the shape of this movement only becomes manifest in the brushwork. Every attempt requires a new coherence in the painting.
Those structures which in 1991 were necessary to guide the viewer had progressively become superfluous. They had suggested the paths of a reverie; the image had been transformed into a mysterious and universal story. To achieve such ample light, the radiance of the paintings had to go beyond the frames; her works carry their serenity much further and in a more mysterious fashion. The colours, freed from these structures, have been transformed into revelations on the nature of light. Vibrant iridescence is the stuff of the painting. The tonalities and the values are, therefore, more necessary and more apparent.
Although less strong than when their role was to underline the volume of the structures, they have gained in intensity. Now we wait for
Denise Lioté to reveal to us all that remains to be heard in the enigmatic universe of silence.»
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Georges Coppel, l’Oeil du Griffon (The Eye of the Griffin) Complement 2004.