Alain Declercq will create a new installation, combining two new works and a large wallpiece titled Jolly Roger (created for the Centre d’ Art Passerelle in Brest in 2002). This work can be seen as a kind of follow-up of ‘Instinct de Mort’: this time Alain pulled the trigger himself - 25,000 times! – to explore the stylistic potential of a 'peinture au pistolet’.
''… he’s a playmate, a reporter in Budapest on Bastille Day tanks,
a KGB agent via an advertising agency, Jesus walking on water,
hanged by erection, Commissionar Broussard on a fake Mesrine …''
(quote from Patrick Jeannes, in: Alain Declercq, Welcome Home, Boss, 2002)
Reading the above, you are bound to think of Alain Declercq as the ultimate daredevil artist. And you are right: destabilising, disturbing and subverting are the keywords of his artistic practice. Alain Declercq always takes a close look at representations of power and authority, and then tries to turn them around and reveal their ambiguity.
To give you an example: Alain duplicated a police car for an exhibition in the Centre d’Art de Brétigny (2002), and allowed the visitors to borrow the fake vehicle. After signing a contract of loan - stating that the borrower is aware of the articles of the Penal Code and assumes entire responsibility for the consequences of the loan - they could take the car and use it on public roads. The perfect paradox: Alain entered total illegality at the precise moment when he tried, with success, to represent one of the symbols of legality.
Another example: at the opening exhibition of the Palais de Tokyo (2002) Alain installed a wooden panel pierced by 650 bullet holes, fired from an automatic gun by an official elite marksman. The holes formed the words ‘Instinct de Mort’, which is the title of a book by Jacques Mesrine. Those who do not know the story: Mesrine was responsible for the massacre at Porte de Clignancourt in 1979 and was assasinated by an official elite marksman - maybe even the same man who re-wrote the title of the book with his deadly weapon. Again: Alain succeeded in confronting symbolic violence and real violence.