Replica

The Blueproject Foundation presents the solo exhibition “Replica”, by the artist Philippe Decrauzat (Switzerland, 1974), which will be shown at Sala Project from June 20 to October 13, 2019.

This solo exhibition by the Swiss artist presents previously unseen painting and one 16mm film. Abstraction is revealed in perceptive effects both in the paintings, through his well-known line patterns, and in the film, using the marbling in the Mies van der Rohe pavilion as a starting point.

1. Artifice, make-believe, mimicry, the stage and its actors, the act of seeing… with one's own eyes, a willing suspension of disbelief, light spilling onto a screen, every image a projection, stars above… flickering, larger than life, motion pictures, the contours of the picture plane, an aerial view, mapping depth of field, lines echoing the curves of the body, fingertips, fading… art, artifice, deception. Bob Nickas (in Philippe Decrauzat, North, South, East and West, 2019)

2. Wavelength, (rewind / forward) (2019) are two similar shaped-canvas paintings with four undulations facing each other. The same black curve is repeated throughout the canvas. Drawing an interrupted signal, the space switches directions and reframes the pattern. An image of a double curtain, open and frozen in its movement, whose function is to slow us down.

3. Paraeidolia (from the ancient Greek “para-”, which means "next to", and “eidolon”, diminutive of “eidos”, which stands for "appearance, shape") is a psychological phenomenon in which a vague and undetermined stimulus (visual or auditory) is more or less perceived as recognizable. This phenomenon consists, for example, of identifying a familiar shape in a landscape, a cloud, smoke or an ink blot, but also recognizing a human voice in a sound, or words (in one’s own language) in a song in which one is unable to understand the actual lyrics are not understood. Source: Wikipedia

4. Another Dream, November 13, 1929. The same night I dream that they put a strange electromagnetic device on my head to make me sleep. Benjamin Ehrlich (in The Dreams of Santiago Ramon y Cajal, 2017)

5. During the European Commission's conference on April 10, 2019, a pannel of scientists unveiled the very first image of a black hole captured by a telescope the size of the Earth. Two images were compared to validate the discovery: the first one was a simulation obtained from calculation; the second one, almost identical in every aspect, was produced from collected observed data. IMAGE IS DATA

6. Replica (2019) is a 16mm colour film projected on a loop onto a screen that has 60 degree-angled mirrors mounted on each side. The screen is folded in a way that the image on each side is projected in the opposite direction. The film is made out of photographic reproductions of the various kinds of marble used for the reconstruction of the Mies van der Rohe pavilion (1986), here in Barcelona. Filmed in 16mm, the film focuses on the patterns created by the material: veins and mottling. The images are animated by repetitions, successions and overlaps.

7. It was also an icon because it was built as an image, not simply to become one, or better said, because it was built with images, because they were the main material used in its construction. Constructing with images was a way to refuse formalism, to separate marble from its visual splendor, to focus on the craftsmanship that can cut and assemble the erotic symmetries in the stone that sets the limits of the pavilion, or the stage design of the velvet curtains that open and close each act, or the shining-machine aesthetics of the chrome columns. Joaquim Moreno (in Continuous Image of an Instantaneous Monument, 2019)

8. In his doctoral dissertation, Hermann Rorschach describes a dream in which he felt his own brain being cut into transverse slices that become a succession of symmetrical images, as in the dissections he practiced as a medicine student. Rorschach also mentions his particular fascination with the dissection of the brain and the fact that he associated "all kinds of reflections on the localization and the cutting up of the soul". Dario Gamboni (in A fold between science and art: Hermann Rorschach and his test, 2012)

9. Marble Veins (2019) is a print that was used to make the film Replica. Here it is shown with a passe-partout framing the image. A frame in a frame in a frame.

10. Fiction is a branch of neurology: the scripts of nerve and blood vessels are the written mythologies of memory and desire. J.G. Ballard (in Sex: Inner Space, 1967)