About the project

La Boulangerie! is delighted to announce its upcoming exhibition, Légèreté, featuring the French artist Mathilde Lestidoubois. This exhibition has been specially conceived for La Boulangerie!’s historic spaces, with the artist creating a new series of paintings that engage with the architecture and its forms.

The artist has created a site-specific work, Envol 1, departing from the typical canvas shapes and arranging an arched wooden panel to temporarily replace one of the windows of La Boulangerie!, seamlessly blending into the space. As always, Lestidoubois’ practice is in constant dialogue with architecture, but this time, her work is completely integrated with the original architectural elements of the space.

A series of draped paintings introduce a rhythmic interplay, responding to the 19th-century ceilings painted by Gilbert, a 19th century glass artisan who worked on many bakeries in Paris. A large painting of fragmented columns, displayed in the window, invites the viewer into an almost utopian, yet abandoned space. Upon entering, human forms begin to appear, levitating in a mirrored room where floating drapery adds an ethereal dimension. The entire space transforms into a dreamlike utopia, disorienting the viewer and blurring the lines of perception.

In the backroom, a new architectural encounter awaits. A single painting dominates the space, enveloping it entirely, inviting us into a metaphysical landscape marked by arches and a stairway to…?

Available works

Drapé en mouvement 9, 2024

oil on canvas

41 x 31 cm

Installation views

About Mathilde Lestiboudois

A solo show, entitled “Le matin des souffles”, was dedicated to her work at the art center Les Églises (Chelles, France) from November to January 2023. Dilecta dedicated a Focus to her work on their booth at Art Paris 2024 and she will be part of the show « Perspectives » at Dilecta gallery from September 5th to October 5th 2024 next to three others woman artists. 

Her work is in severals important collections such as Agnès b collection (Paris), Casa de Velasquez collection (Madrid), del Taller del Prado collection (Madrid) and Dietrich Mateschitz collection (Salzbourg). 

She is currently in residence at the POUSH Manifesto workshops (Paris) and is represented in France by Dilecta Gallery.

About Mathilde Lestiboudois

Born in 1992, Mathilde Lestiboudois graduated from the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts in Paris, where she studied under Jean-Michel Alberola. She also studied at the Universitäte der Kunst in Berlin in 2016 and was recently a resident at the Casa de Velasquez in Madrid in 2021-2022.

Initially a painter, Mathilde Lestiboudois depicts empty interior spaces where architectural fragments (stairs, pools, arches, columns) and furniture objects (chairs, armchairs, sheets) intermingle on geometric backgrounds tinted with blues and greens. The always frontal compositions evoke non-places, spaces halfway between reality and imagination, floating and uncertain, and convey a precarious atmosphere between “something soothing or, on the contrary, very distressing,” in the words of the artist. The human figure, although formally absent from her compositions, is nevertheless suggested by the drapery that inhabits the scenes, bringing a theatrical dimension and a tension of forthcoming or just-passed action.

Mathilde Lestiboudois’s drawings made in oil on paper or oil on tracing paper constitute a corpus of works independent but parallel to her pictorial practice. Working on much tighter formats – paintings rarely being less than 100 × 140 cm while drawings do not exceed 20 × 30 cm – she carries out a different reflection on composition: although the execution is faster, the attention to the subject is more precise, more meticulous. Made without decoration, the chosen objects (column, staircase, ladder, drapery) are drawn in series, almost obsessively. Although the same object is represented several times, it is placed in a unique atmosphere. Its representation is therefore no less singular and marked by the passage of time. Mathilde Lestiboudois thus pushes the plastic research of the subject to its climax, infusing it with a supplement of soul.

Recently, her work has been shown in the group exhibitions “Allusions perdues” at the Casa de Velázquez, Académie de France in Madrid (22 October 2022 – 22 January 2023) and “¡ Viva Villa!” at the Collection Lambert in Avignon (11 November 2022 – 12 February 2023), at the Paris-B gallery (Paris) “Les Lueurs du vide”, PB-Project (5 November 2022 – 17 December 2022). More recently, her work has been shown in a duo show entitled “Paradis Artificiels” at Galerie Dilecta (11 May – 10 June 2023) and in a group exhibition entitled “True Colors” at Hangar 7 in Salzburg (Austria).  A solo show, entitled “Le matin des souffles”, was dedicated to her work at the art center Les Églises (Chelles, France) from November to January 2023. Dilecta dedicated a Focus to her work on their booth at Art Paris 2024 and she will be part of the show « Perspectives » at Dilecta gallery from September 5th to October 5th 2024 next to three others woman artists. 

Her work is in severals important collections such as Agnès b collection (Paris), Casa de Velasquez collection (Madrid), del Taller del Prado collection (Madrid) and Dietrich Mateschitz collection (Salzbourg). 

She is currently in residence at the POUSH Manifesto workshops (Paris) and is represented in France by Dilecta Gallery.