Philippe Decrauzat

The work of Philippe Decrauzat involves the view (look) by his strong physical presence which beyond the retinal and perceptve game recreate the environment in a new relationship between culture and history.

Despite the fact that his work formally belongs to abstraction and Op Art, it is more the result of various influences. The links created with the history of forms but also with the so-called low culture suggest a change in our perception of those two worlds respectively considerated elitist and popular. He does not only proceed by appropriation, but prefers discrete and intermingled references; he choose his motives and forms for their spatial and visual qualities. In an interview, the artist precises the link whith this kind of vocabulary: " I am interested in this direct relationship that the Op Art create with the viewer, by the manner it influences the way we look at the masterpiece. "However, unlike the artists of the eighties, i'm not trying to develop a discours about the ideological stakes which have accompanied the historical developement of the abstraction. Far from being tributary of the Op Art, I'm more grateful (related) to practical which question the statute of the image, which means the tools brought on the scene by the conceptual art and the pop art."

The distortion which operates in those forms is the result of this compression of various influences, this variation on motives more or less dominating. But in the same time those references to a more "popular" culture relativise the optical experience. This material of signification and motives tied alltogether can be experienced as a wandering: an emancipated way of using a rigorous vocabulary that the artist approach skew, by playing or in declination like a type-setter who would repeat a sound motive to which he would print his own modulations in order to create a dynamic.