Odile DECQ

French artist and architect Odile Decq was born in 1955

She lives and works in Paris

Presented at galerie Oniris since 2011

An iconoclastic personality, Odile Decq claims a transversal approach to architecture that would not be confined to a strict profession but would encompass other aspects such as design and plastic creation. As a real jack-of-all-trades, she designs buildings, furniture, lighting... just as she creates sculptural or photographic works where each line and each form is expressed without chatter or embellishment.

I act as an artist when I exhibit spatial interventions, or create objects that bring to mind my preoccupations in the field of architecture, but which then take on another meaning; I free myself from the status of architect, in order to interpret my creations myself as an artist.

For a woman born in the fifties, choosing to be an architect was probably Odile Decq's first hold-up on her destiny. Taking over her agency as soon as she graduated from the Ecole de la Villette, while continuing her studies at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris where she obtained her D.E.S.S. in urban planning in 1979, is the second.

International recognition came very early, as early as 1990, on the occasion of her first major project: the Banque Populaire de l'Ouest in Rennes. The very numerous prizes and publications that accompanied the construction of this building underline the birth of a new hope born of the punk revolt that was breaking dusty conventions.

An iconoclastic personality, Odile Decq claims a transversal approach to architecture that would not be confined to a strict profession but would encompass other aspects such as design and plastic creation. As a real jack-of-all-trades, she designs buildings, furniture, lighting... just as she creates sculptural or photographic works. As with her architectures, the work begins with the lines she wishes to be as minimal as possible.

Although the dynamics are different between that of a graphic composition and that of a future building, we find this research on space with the geometrical layout of her drawings. Odile Decq refuses to do "illustrative drawing", in her compositions each line is expressed without chatter or embellishment. Simplification then leads to a form of total abstraction.

According to Odile Decq, the relationship of the spectator to the work is rather mobile. The space has the human body as its reference point and is seen as a universe of experience and sensations. The spectator should not be contemplative but active.

Her creation is much more than a style, a writing, an attitude or a production process, it is multidisciplinary.