Mathis Aguado Duguccipourmonchat

EDUCATION
2020 – DNAP, ESAD – École Supérieure d’Art des Pyrénées, Pau
2019 – Studio assistant (painting/drawing), Antoine Horfée, Paris
2018 – Assistant in drawing and animation, Antoine Horfée, Paris
2017 – ESAPB – École Supérieure d’Art Pays Basque, Bayonne

EXHIBITIONS
Fév 2025 – Le bal des pompiers, group show, curated by Oihana Ospital, 22 l’galleu, Ivry
Fév 2025 – Aerophobia, solo exhibition by invitation of UpcomingStudio, Midori.so Gallery, Tokyo Mai 2024 – Memory form Pillows, solo exhibition by invitation of Le Virage, Quimper
Jan 2024 – Dissidia, group show, curated by Romain Sein, Julio Artist Run Space, Paris
Nov 2023 – Graffiti, auction and exhibition, Pierre Bergé & Associés, Paris

Gleb: Your series Faded brings to mind the tradition of abstract painting. However, instead of purely gestural abstraction, your visual language seems filled with fragments of pop culture and collective imagery. Do you see these works as a form of personal expression, and if so, how do these shared cultural references become part of your own visual vocabulary?

Mathis: My first serious relationship with drawing was copying manga. From the age of six until my early teens, I spent countless hours reproducing characters and images from the series I was obsessed with. Looking back, those drawings were probably my first real artistic practice.

Years later, while studying in art school, I found myself wanting to return to those influences. At the time, this was often discouraged. Manga and animation were seen as references that had to be left behind in order to develop a more legitimate artistic language. Yet the more I tried to move away from them, the more I realized that they were deeply tied to the reasons I had started making images in the first place.
Returning to these references was a way of reconnecting with a sense of wonder that had accompanied me as a child. What interests me is not simply quoting or celebrating them, but transforming them through painting. In works such as Faded, these familiar figures become fragmented, altered, partially erased and absorbed into abstract spaces. They exist simultaneously as personal memories, cultural artifacts, and emotional containers.

My work operates somewhere between admiration and transformation. These images are part of a shared visual culture, but they have also become part of my own history. Painting allows me to revisit them, distort them, and ultimately use them as a vocabulary through which I can speak about memory, attachment, nostalgia, and the way images continue to inhabit us long after we first encounter them.

Gleb: Works that deal with memory are often associated with fading, distortion, or imperfection. In your works it presents, however, the colors are often bright and clean, or reduced to strong contrasts of black and white. This creates the impression that memory is made of connections, images, and references rather than fixed experiences. How do you think about the relationship between memory and image in your work?

Mathis: I'm not sure my work is really about reconstructing a fixed experience or memory. My relationship to memory feels much less stable than that. Most of my memories are fragmented, incomplete, and often mixed with imagination, images, or stories that I've accumulated over time. I'm rarely certain whether I remember something accurately.

In that sense, painting is not a way of reconstructing the past, but of navigating through these fragments. I usually don't begin with a clear concept in mind. Images emerge intuitively, and only later, when several works exist side by side, do I start to notice recurring themes and connections between them.

The bright colors and soft palettes that often appear in my work are not meant to describe memory faithfully. They are closer to a feeling. They reflect a form of nostalgia, comfort, and the sense of refuge I often associate with certain images from childhood. At the same time, these spaces remain unstable. Figures dissolve, details disappear, and meanings shift.

Rather than preserving memories, I think my work acknowledges how fragile and unreliable they can be, while still holding on to the emotions they leave behind.

Gleb: Appropriation can sometimes lead to very different interpretations from different viewers. Some people may immediately connect with the references, while others may completely misunderstand them. Are you comfortable with this possibility, and how do you think about the gap between your intentions and the audience's reading of the work?

Mathis: I don't think too much about how these references will be interpreted while I'm making the work. Most of the time, I'm focused on the act of painting itself. The images, characters, and fragments that appear are part of my visual landscape, so their presence feels natural rather than strategic.

Once the work is finished, however, it no longer belongs entirely to me. Some viewers immediately recognize the references and bring their own memories and associations to them. Others encounter them without any familiarity and read them in completely different ways. Both reactions are equally interesting to me.

What matters is not whether the viewer understands the exact source of an image, but whether something resonates. A manga character, a fragment of text, or a familiar silhouette can function as an entry point, but the meaning of the work is never limited to its references.

In many ways, I think these images operate like memories themselves. They carry personal significance, but they also remain open to projection, misunderstanding, and reinterpretation. I'm comfortable with that ambiguity. In fact, I think it's where much of the work comes alive.