Philippe Decrauzat “Pour Tout Diviser”
Elizabeth Dee
This event has ended.
Elizabeth Dee presents Philippe Decrauzat’s pour tout diviser., a two-sided exhibition in three acts. Originating in Madrid, continuing in Paris and concluding here in New York, this exhibition of new architecture, paintings and film explores the limits of painting and painting’s relation to space, realized on seven newly established walls in the gallery that exhibit elements of a painting that can only be completed by the visitors movement through the gallery space.
For the third episode of this multi-city exhibition, Decrauzat physically materializes an architectural projection of the entrance façade into the gallery’s central space—by designing and building a replica of these walls in connection to the found structural facade of the gallery. The view from the inside of the room to the frontage storefront is composed of windows and walls, alternating in transparency and opacity in seven sections. On each wall is a painting exactly measuring it completely on front and back, floating in space and held steady by the new wall. Each painting is a part of comprehensive painting, just as each wall is a part of the larger framework of the space. The sides of the gallery remain untouched and vacant, allowing for a dimensional experience of the room’s center, extending both of these systems into the realm of perception, spatial and optical experience.
Decrauzat’s magenta and cyan paintings are part of the On Cover series that the artist begin in 2011. The artist was inspired by the image on the cover of a 1963 Scientific America featuring the phenomenon of moiré patterns that was strong moment of connection, which linked science and art, pop culture and experimental art. Moiré is the combination of two systems, combining two graphic layers that vibrate optically. Decrauzat uses these graphic representations to reveal variations in a regular sequence, changes of rhythm and interferences, which in turn inspired the design of the exhibition. It’s impossible to see the paintings at once, requiring the viewer to mobilize through, yielding the potential of a viewpoint and possible completion of the work. The On Cover series has adopted different formats, a black and white wall painting was presented at the FRAC Ile-de-France/Le Plateau in 2011, and fragmented versions of the motif in a series of shaped canvas monochromes appear in several of his more recent exhibitions.
In the adjacent gallery, Decrauzat will debut a silent 16mm film, the latest in a series of Anisotropy works, most recently exhibited at Le Magasin, Grenoble. Filming a scientific object that the artist employed as a sculpture in previous exhibitions, Decrauzat uses the film sequence’s optical potential to deter and reflect light through this film’s method of double exposure. It evokes a device such as the zoetrope, once animated, produces the illusion of movement based on retinal persistence. The film works with the archeology of cinema to confront an object, whose theoretical goal is invisibility. The result is an extraordinary hypnotic effect projected on a 16mm silent projector. The sculpture, once a scientific object for (light) wave research, is relegated to an architectural surface that is animated by the light and shadow of black and white film. It catches light and redirects it outside of itself, autonomously establishing a vision of space that is evolving.
Media
Schedule
from September 13, 2014 to October 29, 2014
Opening Reception on 2014-09-13 from 18:00 to 20:00