20.MAY – 30.JUL.2006

Continuum Distorsion
…And on to the Discotheque, Comrade ?

Xavier Noiret-Thomé
Philippe Decrauzat

The exhibition is curated by Sarah Zürcher

With Continuum Distorsion and …And on to the Discotheque, Comrade ?, Fri-Art, Fribourg’s Contemporary Art Centre, proposes an in-depth reflection on the pictorial act, and more specifically on the work of appropriation linked to the evolution of painting in the 20th century and to the concept of originality. Designed for Fri-Art, these two exhibitions germinated for a long time in order to confront the joint work of several artists. The works mix, split and multiply different points of view, superposing visions and infinite influences. Finally, they slyly launch a dialogue between break and tradition, questioning our relationship with history and the reception of the work. As if it were hidden, the meaning of art may be elsewhere, beyond its temporal aspect, beyond the frame of the image and of a space which in this case is the space of the exhibition.

…And on to the Discotheque, Comrade? is the name of an on-site intervention created by Philippe Decrauzat in cooperation with Scott King and James Fry, which will be on view in Fri-Art’s staircase as of May 19 and until 2009. As a follow-up to Komakino, created for the Mamco, Philippe Decrauzat wished to fashion the logo of the punk rock group Dead Kennedys as a monumental wall painting with a flexible and random structure in an intermediary vertical space.

This space, which links the two exhibition areas as well as the inside and the outside, unfolds the story of Dave Mayhem, a failed punk, as well as Decrauzat’s geometrical shapes. The modules are freed of their context. They add on to or subtract themselves from the surrounding space. Developing new vanishing points, both open and closed upon an imaginary yet very real universe, the artists shake up and modify our perception of the place by confronting it with composite worlds. These composite worlds confront each other, revealing the subculture’s social and political universe, favouring counter-culture with its subversive values.

In his screenprint DK for the Fri-Art reception area, Decrauzat this time features motifs of a concert stage of the 60’s, a parquet.

MO+TUE	by appointment
WED+THU+FRI	12am–6pm
SAT+SUN	1–6pm

Links