Collage Décollage

Although from very different origins and cultures, Doğançay (born in Istanbul, Turkey, in 1929) and Villeglé (born in Quimper, France, in 1926) share the same interest in the city. Whereas the former soon felt the need to travel and find out what was happening elsewhere, the latter moved to Paris and henceforth participated in the collective “Nouveau Réalisme” adventure. Although Doğançay’s art was originally based primarily on conventional pictorial practices –almost exclusively gouaches and watercolours which stand testimony to his numerous journeys– since the mid-1960s he has taken his themes uniquely from images and signs seen on the walls of the cities he has traversed. As of 1949, Jacques Villeglé’s art has been based on collecting a world of ready-made “paintings” that are offered to him by “anonymously torn posters” that he sees when exploring the city. 

Collage [gluing, pasting] and décollage [tearing down, unpeeling] characterize two sets of attitudes that, if not parallel, converge, and summon up a world of colorful icons founded on the theme of the city or images in which it is absorbed into uncompromisingly abstract compositions. The idea of bringing together two leading artists of their generation in the same exhibition aimed to reveal to viewers the similarities, as well as the differences between Doğançay and Villeglé, whose works anticipate, in their own way, the arrival of “graffiti” art as part of the same aesthetic impulse. The exhibition catalogue includes works by Doğançay and Villeglé, as well as an article by Philippe Piguet, curator of the exhibition, and biographies of the artists.

Date of Publication: 2008
Number of pages: 106
ISBN: 978-975-9123-45-1