Mathias Kiss

 After many years of extreme rigour and intense discipline with the Compagnons, Mathias Kiss freed himself from the codes of traditional Haussmann architecture dictated by his forefathers, to resurface as a true artist. His own true hallmark today is a radical change in approach to habitat.

These days he is no longer approached to do restoration work, but instead to create works in situ for individuals and collectors, who call upon him to transform their lairs into artworks.

It is not design, but installation. Mathias Kiss does produce ornamental or decorative work when collectors invite him to their homes; M. Kiss uses their personal spaces as raw material for his work.

When he produces a rug for example, neither the colour nor the material are important; he extracts a shape, that he designs, between the cracks composing the herringbone parquet flooring. His vision was finely tuned through the rigour and the nobility of French architecture; he cannot refrain from distorting these codes that are etched on his heart, like a leitmotif.

When it comes to the thickness of the velvet or the shade of the rug, he lets the interior designers handle it.

His legacy is rich, the references he assimilated during his apprenticeship with the Compagnons belong to the past, and he now feels empowered as an artist, to circumvent and tailor them to works rooted in the present.

When he talks about the “Kiss Room,” a truly monumental and habitable sculpture, fully lined with mirrors, he explains that this experimental room could well have been created at the time of Louis XIV, a sort of contemporary Hall of Mirrors, as the techniques he used are comparable to those used for ancient panelling.

When he creates painted skies today, it is no longer to restore the ceilings of the Louvre, but to materialize a compelling need for air, an example of which he installed in the former headquarters of the Communist Party designed by Oscar Niemeyer.

These skies no longer cover Haussmann ceilings, but vertical walls, canvases.

By definitively leaving the Compagnons, Mathias Kiss almost impulsively rejected the presence of the right angle.

In guise of a visual tantrum, he entitled his first series as an artist “Without 90°,” making a highly symbolic mockery of his old life.

The artist constantly draws inspiration from his training indelibly marked by his experience with the Compagnons, that he decided in spite of everything to suddenly quit whilst in his thirties. He reinvented coving when he created “Golden Snake,” as part of the series “90°.”

Originally placed where French ceilings and walls meet, this golden frieze found in bourgeois Parisian apartments was abused by Mathias Kiss.

This artist automatically misappropriates the codes of our habitats.

By Margaux Barthelemy.

2017: Exposition personnelle - Galerie Elle, Zürich. Exposition collective Miroir Miroir - MUDAC, Lausanne. // PAD - Paris - Galerie Armel Soyer.

2016:? In situ installation - YIA, Bruxelles. Lauréat du prix YIA ?Golden Snake installation - dialogue avec Janaina Mello - Palais de Tokyo, Paris?Out of time Installation - Collection privée Wooyoungmi

2015: Radiant Room installation - Collaboration Boucheron // Diamonds installation- Collaboration Cartier // Coffret Le Grand Antique - édition Beauregard pour Le Bon Marché Rive Gauche // Collective exhibition Disparition galerie Honoré //  Personal show Ornementation Brutaliste - galerie NextLevel. // ArtParis ArtFair - Galerie Armel Soyer. // Design Miami/Basel - Galerie Armel Soyer.

2014: Mercure Installation for the exhibition Open Museum curated by Air. Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille. // Half Installation in the occasion of PAD Paris. // ArtParis ArtFair - Galerie Armel Soyer.
Design Miami/Basel - Galerie Armel Soyer.

2013: Kissroom Installation, off show in the occasion of FIAC // Golden Snake #7 à la galerie Robert Four // Solo show at Design Miami/Basel with Armel Soyer Gallery // Blue Portor Installation for the Wallpaper exhibition during design week, Milan // Wallpaper Design Award for Miroir Froissé #1      

2012: Monographic exhibition Sans 90° à la galerie Armel Soyer.

2008: Creation of three pieces Sans 90° : Miroir Froissé, Tapis Magyar et Banquette Igloo.

2002: First exhibition at Teisso Gallery