PHOTO | BRUT #2 Collection Bruno Decharme

In 2019, the Rencontres de la photographie d’Arles hosted the exhibition PHOTO | BRUT collection Bruno Decharme & compagnie, which was picked up in 2021 by New York’s American Folk Art Museum. In 2022, Bruno Decharme and Anne-Françoise Rouche (La “S” Grand Atelier) wanted to reveal other facets of “outsider photography” through recent works by a hundred artists.   

Held at Le Botanique, the second edition of the PHOTO | BRUT Collection Bruno Decharme constitutes the logical extension of the Arles exhibition. Showcasing brand new works and offering an unprecedented opportunity to discover this outstanding form of photography, the 360-pieces rich show is subdivided into four chapters.

Since it first emerged, the concept of Outsider Art has consistently challenged our aesthetic perceptions, definitions of art and assumptions about our identity. Today, through the eyes of new collectors, academics, and a steadily growing audience, and also through the budding interest of other actors in the art world – contemporary art in particular – questions on this form of art arise and evolve.

Based on four main thematic areas, namely Journals / World Diaries, The Body, A Stranger, Games for Two and Hauntologies: Spirits and Ghosts, the exhibition attempts to understand and introduce the public to this relatively unexplored field of art, which offers a fascinating and abundant corpus.

  1.   JOURNALS / WORLD DIARIES

« In outsider art, the intimate life experiences of the artist and the history of the world are often inextricably interwoven together. Images and words – sometimes even complete sentences extracted from newspapers and magazines – are incorporated into the artwork by the artist to nourish the piece and recount their private life. In addition, these excerpts echo current events in a very particular fashion.» Barbara Safarova

The artworks presented in this part of the exhibition deploy multiple and surprising connections – infinite trails – leading us through labyrinthine webs of political events, scientific data, newspaper headlines, citations, pamphlets, and photographs. Often, visitors confront an insurmountable wall before moving on to another direction that awaits their eyes.

The tangles we encounter in our attempts to decode the associations established by all these artists interfere with the chronological order. Consequently, we have difficulties in comprehending these pieces, where temporalities and meanings overlap.

1.  Journaux intimes / journaux du monde 

« Dans les œuvres d’art brut, il existe souvent un entrelacement saisissant entre l’histoire intime du créateur et l’histoire du monde, l’une étant indissociable de l’autre. Les images, les mots, qui peuvent aller jusqu’à des phrases entières, prélevés dans les journaux et magazines, sont intégrés par l’artiste pour enrichir l'œuvre et raconter sa vie privée. Simultanément ces prélèvements font un écho particulier à l’actualité. » Barbara Safarova

Les œuvres présentées dans cette section déploient une multitude de liens surprenants - jeux de pistes infinis - qui nous promènent dans des réseaux labyrinthiques d’évènements politiques, de données scientifiques, de titres extraits des journaux, de citations, de tracts, de photographies, où nous finissons par buter - très souvent - contre un mur infranchissable, avant de prendre une autre direction qui s’offre à nos yeux.

Les nœuds auxquels nous sommes confrontés dans nos tentatives de déchiffrement des associations faites par tous ces artistes, perturbent l’ordre chronologique ; d’où notre difficulté de compréhension de ces œuvres dans lesquelles les temporalités et les significations se superposent.

  2.   THE BODY, A STRANGER

« This theme highlights artworks that express the preoccupation of some artists with their own bodies. How they function, their transformations, their frontier (including the skin), and their fragmentation in some cases, their sometimes amorphous or even monstrous appearance.» Barbara Safarova

The artists in this section tackle specific portions of their bodies; some of them resist revealing themselves as a whole. The boundaries between body and exterior are unclear: microcosm and macrocosm fuse in a non-delineation of the self that entails participation with the world. For example, Dirk Martens uses collage to chronicle his journeys inside his body. Body fragments mix with sharp metal tools, which find an extension in indecipherable texts that transform into disoriented networks. There is a sense of profound isolation, a withdrawal into the self, and a lack of opening to the outside world.

To save oneself, it is essential to undertake grafts – hybridisation, mixing – that enable openness, implying a transition to the other. By collecting the debris of the world – excerpts from newspapers and fashion magazines, anonymous photographs, and everyday objects – in order to rebuild the image of the world and the image of the self. This necessity imposes an obligation to carry on, to start afresh in a bid to avert an existential catastrophe, the collapse of the self.

 3.   games for two

« The heading of this chapter alludes to fantasised relationships, dreamt up by the artist in relation to the object of their desire. The works presented here involve the cross-identifications between the often-anonymous artists and the women who are the focus of their obsessive experiences. They broach the topic of the transformations of the sexed body, as it changes under the eyes of the creator.» Barbara Safarova

The artist can manipulate the image, shaping the object of their desire by adding, by juxtaposing. Whereas one artist is a voyeur (M.Tichy), another (Fieret) directs the models that he met at the academy. Often, the images produced are altered during the printing process through induced ageing, mistreatment of the negative (scratches), or cropping, in the goal of showing the part of the body that is subject to fantasy. Through cross-dressing, make-up, and the addition of ornaments, muses become manifold, one woman becomes a thousand others. The enigmatic pictures presented confront us with our own fantasies or our own anxieties.

4.   Hanthologies : spirits and ghosts

« The artworks featured in this chapter demonstrate the extent to which the past, the absence (of a loved one or loved ones), bereavement, or unprocessed tragic events can haunt us. They bear witness to the invisible and/or ghostly presence of the spirits that accompany us throughout our daily lives. Whether they are imaginary or actual families, the mystery persists...» Barbara Safarova

Hauntology – a neologism homonymous with ontology (the study of nature and being) – is a word coined by Jacques Derrida in his book Specters of Marx (1993), to reverse the primacy of the living and the present in favour of “ghosts”: the incursion of elusive alterity into our existing intellectual framework.

Derrida sees the figure of the spectre as meaning-producing, as haunting us while begging to be unveiled. Conversely, psychoanalysts consider it trauma or a transgenerational secret that awaits to be expressed. The artworks of the featured artists in this section directly address the tension between our desire to understand and an openness to that which goes beyond our knowledge. As viewers, we are in awe of these enigmatic creations.

There are as many different kinds of hauntologies as there are creators, and each artist expresses their own experience of this intrusion, their own sensitivity. Some endeavour to expose the bestiality of humans, such as José Manuel Egea’s werewolves. Others orchestrate unlikely encounters between deceased individuals, while a few others reconnect the living with their own deceased. Some of the pieces testify to a certain exorcism, a ritual conjuring up the personal history of their creators, through the manipulation of family albums or their reappropriation.