DECKO

 

Echo des origines (Echo of Origins)

 

While Decko benefits from well deserved recognition in foreign artistic circles, he has been a rarity in Mulhouse, where his last personal exhibit was in 1994. Echo des origines (Echo of Origins) reconnects with the thread of this story by presenting some fifty works created over the past three decades. The exhibit is not a retrospective, which would mark periods of his work and trace his evolution. The idea is rather the opposite: show the unity of this work over the years and emphasize the importance of the long haul in the creative process.

 

Les Structures cosmiques (Cosmic Structures) thus is built on an original 1978 drawing, repeated in color, reworked by fragments, reinvented, ultimately becoming a sculpture created for this exhibit. Les Mélodies cosmiques (Cosmic Melodies), too, took shape over a succession of years, as did Ondulations fluidiques (Fluid Undulations) and Traces. 

The polyptych A la foi(s) précédente, also done for this exhibit, dialogues through its rhythm with Résonnances en 7 points (Resonances in 7 points; 1997) as it does with Ondulations, whose sinusoidal lines echo the draped fabric of the Saint.

 

Warm and outgoing, Decko talks readily of his work. Names and ideas come forth, clarifying his approach. A few examples at random: From Jacky Chevaux (1943-1995), a charismatic artist who died far too young, he has acquired perfect technique in service to a questioning of the world and of self. To Mircea Eliade (1907-1986), the greatest of historians of religion, he has derived his interest in the forms of religiosity (myths, the sacred, transcendence…). With Etienne Klein (1958- ), eminent specialist of quantum physics, he ponders time and the origin of the universe… Other references evoke the esoteric, symbols, peace, travel etc.

 

This syncretism situates the Decko's thought within art and philosophy, science and religion. He wants to embrace the world, grasp its profound unity – from the infinitely big to the infinitely small – in its serial rhythms and its fractal variations; but also to seize its frequencies and vibrations, its forces and energies, and simultaneously translate its order and disorder, genesis and chaos… All this through lines and colors where symmetry plays a major role, around an axis whose irregularities remain aleatory: the laws of physics confront the theories of uncertainty!

 

In Decko's universe, the human being's place is not neglected, least of all his, with the inclusion in his canvasses of memories both personal (Carnet de Route/Travel Log) and family (Ouranopolis). As for symbols and signs, borrowed from various civilizations or invented, they translate the common heritage of humanity (Traces). But the artist sounds out, above all, the material and makes his way in spaces indifferently real or imaginary, which combine personal geography, scientific reverie and transcendental interrogation. Decko's painting, meticulous and precise to the point of asceticism, indeed, obsession, thus presents itself as an invitation to meditation.

 

Joël Delaine

Chief Curator of the Mulhouse Municipal Museums