{"id":9030,"date":"2021-03-10T09:00:57","date_gmt":"2021-03-10T08:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artinterview.com\/interviews\/olivia-descampe\/"},"modified":"2021-03-19T22:02:48","modified_gmt":"2021-03-19T21:02:48","slug":"olivia-descampe","status":"publish","type":"interview","link":"https:\/\/artinterview.com\/en\/interviews\/olivia-descampe\/","title":{"rendered":"Olivia Descampe"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Interview with Giovanni Lista on the work of artist Olivia Descampe, by Antonio Furone.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

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A. F. : <\/strong>What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you look at the works of Olivia Descampe? In other words, what is your first impression of her work?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Giovanni Lista\u00a0<\/strong>: In my view, there is first and foremost a historical approach to her work, or at least to her creative practice \u2013 in technical terms. The informal practice of collage & decollage was invented at the end of the 1940s, by Jacques Villegl\u00e9 in France and by Mimmo Rotella in Italy, although other artists practiced it too, such as Raymond Hains or Fran\u00e7ois Dufr\u00eane.<\/p>\n

It is important to remember that France and Italy had accepted the Marshall Plan, which introduced the United States\u2019 liberal capitalist and consumerist principles into Europe. Incidentally, the dates match perfectly. The Marshall Plan came into effect in April 1948 and the following year, artworks based on pasting and tearing urban posters appeared. This iconographical process deconstructed the seductive and colorful language of advertising posters, which had begun to prevail in the streets of post-World War II Europe. These posters invited people to participate in this emerging consumerism, therefore their laceration denoted both a gesture of defiance and an underlying form of political sociology.<\/p>\n

Jacques Villegl\u00e9 and Mimmo Rotella would later become members of the Nouveau R\u00e9alisme<\/em> group, founded by art critic Pierre Restany in an attempt to directly reclaim elements of reality into art. Only in 1957 did Roland Barthes\u2019 essay Mythologies<\/em> publish semiological analyses of these posters, which celebrated consumer society.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n

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A. F. : <\/b>So you connect her work to the artistic trends of the post-war period. This excludes the historical avant-garde<\/em> movements of the first half of the 20th century, which used collage extensively \u2013 I am referring to German Dadaism in particular…<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Giovanni Lista\u00a0<\/strong>: I think you mean the distinction outlined by Maurizio Calvesi in Italy and reiterated by Peter B\u00fcrger in Germany. They differentiated the historical avant-gardes<\/em> of the first half of the 20th century, like Futurism or Expressionism, that had an overall revolutionary and political project, from the avant-gardes<\/em> of the second half of the century, like Lettrism or New Realism. The latter advocated a formal revolution without ever entering the field of politics. Yes, it is important to distinguish avant-gardes<\/em> and neo-avant-gardes<\/em> because they speak of two very different eras.<\/p>\n

German Dadaism did indeed use collage extensively, but in the form of photomontages oriented towards materials. These highlighted the process of creating images with an apparently structural unity, the artificiality of which actually denounced the hidden truth behind the photographic image. The photomontages made by German Dadaists, like Heartfield or Hausmann, were formidable political weapons. The case of Max Ernst, who exclusively used historical prints, is of a different nature. However, if we refer back to the works produced in the last few years, some of Olivia Descampe\u2019s collages & decollages are reminiscent of the processes implemented by Bauhaus artists and repeated by the Italian Futurists. For instance, Tiny Dancers<\/em> (2017), and other similar works where she creates visual rhythms by sticking vertical bands of adhesive tape on an image before tearing them off. In this case, the interaction between the resulting material texture and the underlying desecrated image follows a controlled pattern which is constructive in nature \u2013 very different from the spontaneous vein of or Informal abstract art. The image is erased, degraded, aged, ravaged, but the result displays measured rhythm, with a repeated regularity that creates a visual pattern, a constructed form. Olivia Descampe asserted that collage<\/em> as a medium connects the past to the present, while decollage<\/em> connects the present to the past. In the work I just mentioned, the image of dancers outdoors is not questioned as such. However, the artist\u2019s formal work prevails. And this is a piece related to rhythmic discipline.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

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\u00abTiny Dancers \u00bb\n\nHandmade decollage with tape on paper.\n\n23x24cm\n\n2017<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Some artists from the German Bauhaus, such as Xanti Schawinsky, used this laminar pattern to deconstruct photographic images. The process was then used again by Italian futurists such as Marcello Nizzoli and ultimately appeared in Victor Vasarely\u2019s 1976 kinetic optic portrait of Georges Pompidou. But the very first example of laminar optical and kinetic decomposition is a portrait of Rudolph II in the St. George\u2019s Cloister in Prague, dating back to the late 16th century, between Mannerism and Baroque. One can always find historical precedents, but I was referring to Descampe\u2019s most recent works in particular, ie. what she is doing now.<\/p>\n\n\n

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A.F. : Nevertheless, it seems to me that Olivia Descampe\u2019s work is very different from that of the Nouveau R\u00e9alistes <\/em>whose approach was based on appropriating reality …<\/strong><\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Giovanni Lista\u00a0<\/strong>: Absolutely, you are right. Above all, I would say that it does not display luxuriance in colors and image fragments… With Villegl\u00e9, Hains and Rotella, although the image was torn, fragmented and desecrated, it never ceased to bear witness to the emerging massification which saw urban sociology become the new playground for unbridled consumption, ready to generate a new way of life. The brand new phenomenon of mass consumption, which then signified the desire to forget the horrors of war and the will to live, was reflected in a playful and carefree approach to social rituals and new behavioral patterns in public life. The multiplication of advertising posters on city walls and fences was an invitation to live life to the fullest, while identifying with popular figures from the worlds of luxury, cinema and fashion. Through the collage & decollage process, the diverted and fragmented image lost its individuality and the specificity of its narrative function, while retaining its aura of fascination…<\/p>\n

Olivia Descampe’s work is sometimes very close to iconic works by some of the most famous poster-tearers: for example Nothing is real <\/em>(2018), despite its dominant blue color, or Sweet Dream <\/em>(2019). But on the whole, her work has a rather different essence, it is true. In other pieces, especially the smaller ones produced between 2018 and 2019, she places herself in the wake of Informal abstract art, with textural effects reminiscent of Dubuffet and Pollock-style all over swirling. In a piece like Breaking up <\/em>(2018) she seems to exalt the degradation gesture as an end in itself, without any political-sociological implications. But it is interesting to note that at the beginning she had glued colored cards to achieve a kind of abstract geometric composition on which she then exerted her destructive gesture: scratches, ripped or torn fragments, etc.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n