Decebal Scriba (RO/FR) is an artist approaching many different media such as drawing, photography, installation, performance and video art, with sustained activity in the sphere of conceptual art. He lives and works in France since 1991.

“ The coordinates of his works open up many levels, including, on the one hand, that of the analysis of the systems of representation and production and reproduction of space, alongside that of the conceptualization of the (visual, mathematical and textual) signification systems and, on the other hand, at the level of a private, interiorized and nearly existential assumption of the artistic act. ” (Cristian Nae, A Field of Possibilities – Decebal Scriba and The Semiotics of Appearance)


In the 70's and 80's Decebal Scriba used the image as an evidence of a conceptual axiom. Now an invading horde, the pervasive image in our lives gives photography a prodigious ubiquity and a key place in the practices of everyone. Traditionally considered as the reproduction of reality, the photographic image as practiced by the artist, is today decomposed, recomposed, questioned. For Decebal Scriba this document of the daily life, is not marker of reality and not more objective capture of the world. It is the tenderized hunt of a detail or a gear whose look has subtly attributed to it a strong message as symbol and metaphor with an undeniably powerful poetic quotient.

Given the particular configuration of the exhibition space, the artist wanted that his works take place in the cells and panels that articulate the gallery. For this reason, layouts have been made, which brings together each time images that have a common denominator. Thus we find four images of different stains of wear of a concrete floor whose quotient of lyrical abstraction is noticeable. Just as during the walks in the forest, the camera has captured branches whose arrangement seems to be part of a post land art abstract grammar. Halos around light sources on walls plunged into shadow reveal striking intimist aurora borealis but also the different types of day or night light spots that only the camera has the power to freeze. In the interiors left fallow, the artist has fallen in love with the signs of destruction and wear and tear that reveal a totally plastic aesthetic logic. Lines, crossings and spirals drawn on the asphalt in the course of construction sites are for Decebal Scriba visual haikus that remind us of a constructivist lexicon. In the course of these layouts we realize the subjacent designs of the artist who was seized, in his environment or his wanderings, all these unforeseen visual arts.

Curated by Ami Barak

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