With his wall paintings, films, sculptures, paintings, and installations, Philippe Decrauzat’s art is firmly rooted in the legacy of 20th century abstract art, using the formal idiom of Russian Constructivism, the visual effects of Op Art, or the reduced geometries of Minimalism. In spite of this, his works are characterized by their claim to maintain a certain critical distance to all these styles. Consequently, Decrauzat’s position with regard to Modernism is not at all as it appears at first glance. His practice is also associated with the methods and theories of experimental film or pop culture, the cinematography of science fiction, etc. The power of his work lies above all in a “compression” of modern modes of seeing. Beyond the Modernist logic of the optical, Decrauzat focuses on the eye, an instrument long excluded from the discourse of the period.
The exhibition concept developed by Philippe Decrauzat for the Secession highlights the links and transitions between the individual exhibition spaces and provides a metaphor for a balancing of the various areas and periods of art history.
In the Kreuzraum, Decrauzat presents his new film After Birds (2008) for which he digitally rearranged stills from the trailer for Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. The film revolves around an idea of paranoia that can be expressed either in actual physical violence or in a purely subjective shift in perceptions. A central theme reflected in the exhibition architecture is the “fade in/fade out” in the sense of an announcement or premonition that can and will only be confirmed in the course of the film.
This presentation contrasts with the reduced installation in the brighter Zwischenraum in which Decrauzat alludes to various outstanding topoi and events of modern art, such as the Dada review The blind Man published by Marcel Duchamp in 1917 or Joseph Beuys’ performance Coyote from 1974, both of which feature a stick as their central symbol.
In the Galerie space, on the other hand, Decrauzat focuses on an abstract idea of movement and on the question of how it can be depicted at a paradoxical total standstill: The grid patterned sculpture Man the Square refers explicitly to a motion photograph by Eadweard Muybridge whose physiological experiments involved subjects including birds. Decrauzat also developed the sculpture Structure specially for the show – two frames nested inside each other that refer to a display format already used for propaganda purposes. But Decrauzat foregoes content entirely, merely presenting the basic structure (although in slightly distorted form) which recalls the placeholder “X”. Most importantly, however, the sculpture offers a view of a large-scale wall painting which, based on the moiré effect, plays with perception by means of shifts and layering. While the sculpture’s frame remains “empty,” the pictures appear on the wall like fleeting ideas.
