In practising his art PHILIPPE DECRAUZAT (*1974 in Lausanne) analyses methods and theories of optical and kinetic art. His multi-faceted œuvre comprises painting, sculpture, installations and flm whereby PHILIPPE DECRAUZAT depicts movement, time and spatiality statically and audio-visually. He refers to the visual efects of Op Art, the form vocabulary of Russian constructivism as well as to the geometries of minimalism, which he transfers into his own artistic language while maintaining a certain critical distance to these styles. The observer constantly plays an important role. He or she can become immersed in a world accompanied by repetitions, contrasts and optical efects, between suggested illusion and reality.
For his second solo exhibition in the Galerie Nikolaus Ruzicska PHILIPPE DECRAUZAT presents a series of new paintings and installations which carefully analyse the relationships, tensions and stimuli which arise between the visible and the invisible. The starting point for the exhibition is the central architectural cube in the basement of the gallery, on the front and rear side of which a chessboard pattern is to be seen as a mural. The same pattern continues on two other walls. It is either enlarged or reduced by changes in the dimensions and entices the observer, according to his or her standpoint, into a visual trap. The pattern represents the depiction of the software Adobe Photoshop. Transparency, or the lack of information is here shown as a grey and white chessboard pattern. “It is in other words a sign that stands for absence and at the same time this grid is a cultural construction charged with signifcance and history”, says PHILIPPE DECRAUZAT.
The chessboard pattern merges apparently with four paintings from the series Still Times; together they form an installation. The pictures created on the model of a Maltese Cross are free pictorial variations of the multi-axial cross and are based on a combination of a solid grounding, acrylic paint and segments of raw canvas. Maltese Cross is also the name of a construction part in a flm projector, which makes it possible to introduce a pause in the continuous movement of a flm, without interrupting the movement of the pictures. Additionally the same form is found under the name Maltese Cross Position in the casing of mechanical clocks. It is an allusion to the aspect “time”, which is one of the essential characteristics of PHILIPPE DECRAUZAT’s artistic creativity.
The paintings Blind Paintings, which consist of vertical stripes with nuances from black to white, shimmer due to blurred effects and sharp transitions between repetitions and diferences.
Three paintings in the form of waves from the series X Wave are revealed on the upper foor of the gallery. They consist of parallel lines whose sweeping sectional form suggests volume and kinetic power. The optical illusion that is induced by the dynamism yet at the same time rigidity of the painting, leads to a paradox perception of statics and movement. It encourages the observer to reconsider his or her own position in the room. PHILIPPE DECRAUZAT’s œuvre is characterized by a longing to traverse the fractured realm of our viewing habits and to research the related limits. PHILIPPE DECRAUZAT says, “my works invite people to follow a path between analogue and digital pictures, a labyrinthine path that leads through the body and its perceptive system just as much as through the visual history of modernity.
PHILIPPE DECRAUZAT’s works have been shown in several international exhibitions in Europe and the USA, for instance in the Secession Vienna, Kunsthalle Vienna, Haus Konstruktiv Zurich, Le Magasin – Centre national d’art contemporain Grenoble, MUDAM Luxemburg, and the Swiss Institute New York. He has also received many awards, such as the Swiss Art Award, and France’s most important painting prize, the Prix Aurélie Nemours. Recently he was nominated for the Prix Marcel Duchamp 2022.
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