(Lausanne 1974 - lives and works in Lausanne)

Loos. 2008.

Oil on canvas (2-part).

Each 132 x 30 cm.

Provenance:
- Galerie Francesca Pia, Zurich.
- Purchased in 2008 from the above, since then Swiss corporate collection.

The Swiss artist Philippe Decrauzat, whose oeuvre encompasses a variety of media, deals with aspects of human optical perception and movement. He belongs to a generation of artists from West Switzerland seeking to continue and develop a tradition of the 1960s and 70s avant-garde, such as minimalism and Op Art and the exploration of visual perception. Decrauzat brings together the school of conceptual-abstract spatial works with minimal intervention, such as those of John Armleder, or the monochrome geometric works of artists such as Olivier Mosset and creates his own pictorial language. Nevertheless, what distinguishes his works is their claim to a certain critical distance from the already familiar styles.

Philippe Decrauzat was born in 1974 in Lausanne and studied at the École Cantonale d’Art de Lausanne, where today he is a professor. Since the mid-1990s he has won numerous arts prizes, including the Basel Kiefer Hablitzel Prize twice, the Paris prize “Cité Internationale des Arts”, the Swiss Art Award, the Georg and Josi Guggenheim Prize and the Prix Gustave Buchet, to name just a few. Today Decrauzat can also look back on a wide range of international exhibitions. In 1998 he founded “Circuit”, an off-space arts venue in Lausanne. He is a key figure in the art scene of both West Switzerland as well as the whole of Switzerland.

Decrauzat uses various sources of inspiration and media for his paintings, large scale wall paintings, experimental films and architectural and light installations. The relationship to space is very important in Decrauzat’s works and especially in his films and works on walls. “I often work with film, so I’m particularly interested in the idea of projection, recognising a distance, a space between two points.” Philippe Decrauzat, 2006

His works call into question the relationship between reality, illusion and dimension. The work offered here at auction, “Loos” from 2008, is a wonderful example from Decrauzat’s oeuvre. Firstly, this painting respects the typical rectangular format of a classic work on canvas, but it is split by a thunderbolt shape. The depth of the canvas makes the black of the oil paint stand out against the white wall, and a shadow is cast which gives the impression that the work has detached itself from the rest of the wall and is entering the room. His works are based on exact calculations and a perfect application of colour. His chromatically reduced works, as in our example here, develop all the more complex geometric plays on form:

“I am interested in this direct relationship which Op Art establishes with the viewer, by the way and manner in which it influences the gaze. I am not, however, trying to address the ideological challenges associated with the history of abstraction. Even more than Op Art, I have been influenced by practices which question the status of the picture, that is, tools, as those used by Conceptual Art and Pop Art.” Philippe Decrauzat, 2006